Release 258 gives brands more control over how their product imagery reaches each partner and each market, while continuing Icecat’s work on discovery, compliance, and platform reliability. A new Product Gallery API lets brands build a gallery for a specific partner and set image order by market. A predefined name for the EU guarantee label prepares brands and retailers for the rules that apply from 27 September 2026. The Icecat MCP server now tells AI assistants how products are related, while search on Icecat.biz surfaces the exact product model faster. Several behind-the-scenes improvements also strengthen platform reliability.
For additional details, please refer to the previous Icecat Release Notes.
Icecat has released a new Product Gallery API. It sits alongside everything brands use today and enables two things the previous gallery interface couldn’t express.
Until now, a product had a single image gallery, and every recipient of Icecat content saw the same pictures in the same sequence. The new API lets brand partners build a gallery for a specific taxonomy. This means they can create one for a specific partner or channel next to the standard Icecat gallery. A retailer may require lifestyle shots first, while a marketplace may only accept packshots on a white background. A partner may also have its own asset agreement. Each can now be served its own gallery from the same product record and through the same integration. The Icecat gallery stays exactly where it is, as the default everyone else receives.
Image sequence used to be a single decision per image, applied everywhere. The new API separates the gallery’s overall order from each locale’s own order. The same photo can therefore hold a different position in each market – one image, one product record, arranged differently wherever a different lead image works better. Markets without a separate order continue to follow the gallery’s general order, so nothing needs to be arranged market by market unless there is a reason to.
The previous gallery API remains fully available and supported. Every integrator pushing product images today can continue to do so unchanged, with no migration, deadline, or action required. The new API is an additional door onto the same galleries – open it when one of the new capabilities is worth having.
The specification is published at api.icecat.biz, under product-gallery. The Push API manual will be updated shortly with the new capabilities – everything you need will be in the documentation.
Brands can serve partner-specific imagery and market-specific image order from a single product record, without duplicating assets or maintaining parallel exports, while existing integrations continue to work exactly as they do today.
Icecat has added “EU GARAN Label” to the list of predefined short descriptions for other digital assets in Multimedia objects.
The EU rules on harmonized guarantee labels apply from 27 September 2026, and brands are already sending these labels to Icecat. Until now, the only way to store one was to type a description by hand. Two editors would spell it two ways, the same document would arrive at the customer under two different names, and a retailer that had built a display against one of those names could see it change without warning. A predefined value removes that: the label is stored under one agreed name, every time, whoever adds it.
The label is added the way any other digital asset is added – the same dialog, the same file handling, nothing new to learn. It can be issued per locale as well as in an International version, exactly like the values already in the list. Anyone who can add a multimedia object today can select the new value; no permission changes, and no role gains or losses.
Once saved, the label appears on the product page in Icecat Brand Cloud and is delivered in the product data – XML, JSON, CSV/PCF, Live HTML, icecat.biz and the multimedia downloader archive – under that exact name. The name is not translated or rewritten per locale, so it is a stable value to build against. Retailers preparing their guarantee-label display ahead of 27 September can start from a real sample now rather than waiting for the deadline.
The same document now reaches every customer under the same name, in every export format, whoever added it – a value retailers can build a display against ahead of the September deadline.
Related products returned by the Icecat MCP server now carry their relation type.
Until now, an assistant asking Icecat for related products received a list – accurate, but flat. A charger, a competing model, an extended warranty and a replacement filter all came back looking the same, and the assistant had to guess which was which from the product name. It now receives the relation itself: Alternative, Accessory, Service, Consumable, or Compatible. The same information appears in the product overview tool, so an assistant that asks one broad question about a product gets the relations already classified, without a second call.
Each type answers a different shopping question. An Alternative belongs in “show me something similar” and has no place in a basket. An Accessory is the natural add-on at checkout. A Service adds value alongside the product it covers. A Consumable brings the customer back when it needs replacing. A Compatible answers “will this work with what I already own” – the question that most often blocks a purchase. Without the type, an assistant can only do one thing with all five: put them in a single “you may also like” list. With the type, it can send each one where it belongs – the alternative into a comparison, the accessory into the basket, the service to the checkout page, the consumable into a reminder, the compatible one into the answer to “will this fit?”.
The relation type is a fact from the product data, not a recommendation. Icecat does not decide which product to push, when to upsell, or what to place first – that logic stays entirely with the partner, applied to whatever suits their assortment, margin, and market. The catalog stays neutral; the commercial judgment stays yours.
Every field that existed before is unchanged and still returned. The relation type is an optional addition, so existing integrations keep working exactly as they do today with no action required. Coverage is still being filled in across the catalog: where a relation does not yet carry a type, the related product is still returned as before, simply without the classification. No integration has to handle that as an error.
AI assistants and partner integrations can now distinguish alternatives, accessories, services, consumables, and compatibles, and apply their own recommendation logic to each – while every existing integration continues to work unchanged.
This release helps users find the right products faster and browse Icecat.biz with a cleaner, more polished experience. Search results now better reflect what users are actually searching for, and product and content pages no longer show unnecessary sharing icons.
Searching for a specific, current product model – such as a particular phone or laptop generation – now reliably surfaces that exact model at the top of the results. Search recognizes a product’s series and model family as a key relevance signal, including multi-word model names such as “ProBook 650,” and weighs this information meaningfully when ranking results.
Searching by GTIN is now just as precise: when a search matches a product’s GTIN exactly, it shows only that product, without other partially matching or similar items cluttering the results.
Together, these changes mean users spend less time scanning past irrelevant results and land on the exact product they’re looking for, faster and with more confidence.
Content pages, product pages, and the hamburger menu on Icecat.biz no longer display sharing icons, with the official LinkedIn and YouTube links remaining easy to find in the site footer.
This gives users a cleaner, more consistent browsing experience across the site.
Together, these improvements help users:
The result is a more accurate, polished Icecat.biz experience, where users can find and evaluate the right products with less effort.
Release 258 shipped several improvements that change nothing on screen, and nothing in the data customers receive – they make the platform more resilient and easier to maintain.
Icecat runs on many servers working side by side. Until now, each kept its working files on its own machine – which meant that when one server ran into trouble, the trouble didn’t stay there. Everything running alongside it was affected too. We’ve now moved those files to central shared storage, off the individual machines. Now, when a server fails, it takes only itself out of service, and the rest carry on.
The connections between the Icecat website and the Icecat sales system were built at different times, each in its own style, and each had to be maintained as a special case. They have been rebuilt to follow one common pattern – less likely to go wrong and quicker to extend when something new is needed.
Nothing to do, nothing to change, no interruption. This kind of work shows up only in what does not happen: fewer disruptions, shorter ones when they do occur, and less time lost before a fix can begin.
Release 258 combines greater control over product imagery with clearer signals for AI-driven discovery, a stable name for the EU guarantee label, and continued improvements to search and platform reliability. Together, these developments help brands present the right images to the right partner and the right market, give retailers and AI assistants better data to act on, and keep the Icecat platform dependable as it grows. Want to learn more about the new Gallery API, the EU GARAN Label, or how the MCP relation types may affect an integration? Contact the Icecat team for more information.
Read further: Icecat, e-commerce, ecommerce, Icecat, product content, release notes
