What You Need to Know About Selling On Walmart in 2026
The battle for online-selling supremacy is on! Here’s why Amazon sellers might want to take a closer look at Walmart’s rapidly growing marketplace.
Walmart’s third-party marketplace grew 52% year over year last quarter. That makes it the fastest-growing sales channel available to an established Amazon brand right now, and the reason it is growing that fast is that it is still small.
Here’s what the numbers support, and what expanding takes in practice.
Why Walmart’s Marketplace Momentum Matters in 2026
Walmart U.S. marketplace sales grew 52% in the quarter ending July 31, 2026. Walmart U.S. ecommerce grew 24% in the same quarter and advertising grew 38%, per CEO John Furner on the Q2 FY27 earnings call. Global ecommerce grew 23%.
Walmart closed fiscal 2026 with $713.2 billion in total revenue for the year ending January 31, 2026, and 24% global ecommerce growth for the full year. Roughly 280 million customers and members visit its stores and sites each week across 19 countries.
The number Walmart does not put in a headline is the one worth planning around. Marketplace Pulse estimates Walmart’s marketplace GMV at about $15 billion, roughly 10% of its U.S. ecommerce business. On Amazon, third-party sellers account for an estimated 69% of about $440 billion in U.S. GMV. Walmart’s marketplace is compounding above 50% because it is early, not because it is closing in on Amazon.
That is the opportunity and the caveat in one sentence. A brand adding Walmart in 2026 enters a channel with real growth and thinner competition per category, and one that will not replace Amazon revenue in year one. CFO John David Rainey said in April 2026 that the platform carries roughly 500 million items, and that Walmart is recruiting about 300 brands it considers must-haves, with roughly half now on the platform.
Brands already succeeding on Amazon have most of the operational work behind them already. The question is sequencing, not capability.
How to Sign Up to Sell on Walmart
Creating a Walmart seller account takes about a minute. Onboarding to your first live listing averages around 10 days, according to Walmart’s own guidance.
Three steps inside Seller Center:
1. Business verification. Submit your Business Tax ID or Business License Number plus documents verifying your business name and address. A Social Security Number is not accepted.
2. Payment setup. Tell Walmart where to send payments. There are no setup, subscription, or monthly fees.
3. Shipping configuration. Configure shipping methods, costs, and returns. You have five shipping method options: Value, Standard, TwoDay, OneDay, and Freight.
If you already sell on Amazon, most of the operational groundwork is done. The platforms differ more in data structure than in workflow, which is where most expansions go sideways.
Most Walmart launches stall in the first 90 days
Canopy's Partners Achieve an Average 84% Profit Increase!
Pressure-test your launch planThe Approval Process, and Why It Works in Your Favor
Walmart runs a gated marketplace. You apply, Walmart reviews, and you sell only after approval. Amazon lets nearly anyone register and list within days.
What Walmart asks for:
- Business Tax ID or Business License Number, plus verifying documents
- A track record of marketplace or ecommerce success
- Products carrying GTIN or UPC numbers from a GS1 company prefix
- A catalog complying with Walmart’s Prohibited Products Policy
- Fulfillment through WFS or a U.S.-based B2C warehouse that handles returns
The gate cuts both ways. It adds two to three weeks to your timeline, and it keeps out the flood of undifferentiated sellers that makes Amazon categories unwinnable. Your competition on Walmart skews toward established brands.
Item Spec 5.0 Is the Part Nobody Warns You About
This is the single biggest difference between selling on Walmart in 2024 and selling on Walmart now, and it is the reason copy-pasted Amazon listings underperform.
Walmart ended support for Item Spec 4.x on August 31, 2025. Item Spec 5.0, also called OmniSpec 5, replaced freeform text inputs with structured fields and predefined values. Per Walmart’s own Item Spec documentation, the update removed roughly 60% of generic attributes, increased attribute granularity by up to 65%, and improved content quality by about 10%. Marketplace and WFS now share one spec, so you set a product up once instead of twice.
What that means operationally: a listing that passed under the old spec can be technically live and functionally incomplete. The fields that go empty first are the ones that matter most for discovery, which is to say ingredients, materials, use cases, compatibility, and dimensions. Those are the fields shoppers filter on, and products missing them get filtered out of results before a shopper ever sees them.
If you are migrating an Amazon catalog, budget real time for attribute mapping. Amazon’s bullet-and-description model does not translate into Walmart’s structured taxonomy. Exporting your Amazon copy and pasting it into Walmart produces a listing that is present and invisible at the same time.
Sparky Reads Your Attributes Before a Shopper Does
Walmart launched Sparky, its AI shopping assistant, in June 2025. On the Q2 FY27 earnings call, Furner said Sparky usage was up 70% year over year and that customers who use it for shopping spend 40% more per order than those who do not.
Treat that 40% figure carefully. Walmart did not claim causation, and Sparky users select themselves. People who open an assistant to plan a week of meals were probably already larger-basket shoppers. What the number does show is that a meaningful share of high-intent shopping now runs through a conversational surface.
Walmart has not published how Sparky selects products, so anyone selling you a Sparky ranking checklist is guessing. What is documented is the input: Sparky pulls from Walmart’s structured catalog. A shopper asking for a fragrance-free lotion that works for eczema is generating a query that rewards whoever filled in the ingredient and use-case fields. The Item Spec 5.0 work and the AI discovery work are the same work.
Walmart Connect has been testing Sponsored Prompt ads inside Sparky since January 2026. Those run closed-loop, meaning you can only sponsor products already listed on Walmart. Paid placement does not rescue a listing the assistant would not have surfaced on its own.
What Walmart Fulfillment Services Includes
WFS stores your inventory, picks, packs, ships, and handles customer service and returns. No monthly subscription. Fulfillment fees are based on shipping weight alone.
Product requirements:
- Ships to Walmart fulfillment centers from within the United States
- Not perishable or regulated
- Complies with the prohibited products list
- Maximum 150 lbs
- Maximum 108 inches in length, 165 inches length plus girth
The Walmart+ Badge Is No Longer WFS-Only
This changed recently enough that most guides still have it wrong. WFS items get the Walmart+ badge automatically, but seller-fulfilled listings can earn it too.
On April 22, 2026, Walmart tightened the seller-fulfilled requirement from three calendar days to two. Per Walmart’s developer documentation, qualifying requires:
- At least 100 orders fulfilled in the past 90 days
- Seller-fault on-time delivery above 90% over the past 30 days
- Cancellation rate under 2.5% over the past 30 days
- A delivery promise of two calendar days or less
Meet those and Walmart applies free shipping and the badge automatically. WFS remains the reliable path, and it is not the only path. If you already run fast fulfillment from your own warehouse, run the math before handing inventory over.
Walmart Fees Versus Amazon
Walmart’s referral fee is a percentage of your total sale price, ranging from 6% to 15% by category and price tier.
| Fee type | Amazon FBA | Walmart WFS |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly subscription | $39.99 Professional plan | $0 |
| Referral fee | 8% to 15% by category | 6% to 15% by category |
| Storage fees | Volume plus time stored | Weight and volume based |
| Fulfillment fees | Weight and dimensions | Weight only |
Verify current rates in Seller Center and Seller Central before modeling. Both platforms adjust periodically.
One difference worth naming: Amazon’s paid account management program, Strategic Account Services, is invitation-managed and priced per account. Walmart assigns marketplace sellers a WFS specialist at no cost. The support depth differs, and so does the bill.
New-Seller Savings 2026
Walmart is paying brands to expand, and the current terms are materially better than last year’s.
Sellers going live after February 1, 2026 can earn up to $75,000 in total savings. The program closes January 31, 2027. New sellers are auto-enrolled for up to 12 months.
- Referral fee discounts up to $72,000: 20% off base rates on your first $50K in GMV, 30% from $50K to $500K, 40% above $500K
- Up to $2,000 in WFS credits
- $500 in Walmart Connect advertising credits
- $1,000 in Search Engine Marketing credits
The U.S. marketplace is open to sellers based in a growing list of countries beyond the United States. Check Walmart’s current international seller page before assuming eligibility, since the list has expanded twice in the past year.
Three Ways Walmart Launches Go Wrong
Treating Walmart like Amazon. Porting listings without restructuring for Item Spec 5.0 produces technically live, functionally invisible products. Walmart shoppers also skew more value-conscious and search on different attributes. Rewrite titles and structured fields for Walmart rather than exporting from Amazon.
Underestimating the timeline. Application review runs two to three business days for established sellers. Listing approval adds three to five more. Attribute mapping for a large catalog adds weeks. Start six to eight weeks before your intended launch, not two.
Launching without category research. Home goods and consumables tend to perform well. Electronics face steeper competition. Pull category-level benchmarks before committing inventory, because Walmart’s category dynamics do not mirror Amazon’s.
Getting Started with Walmart Connect
Walmart’s ad platform works on auction-based keyword targeting, and new Marketplace sellers are automatically registered to Walmart Ad Center.
Sponsored Products appear in search results and on item pages, sending clicks straight to your item page. Sponsored Brands put your logo and up to four products at the top of results, available to brand owners registered with Walmart Brand Portal.
CPCs on Walmart have run below Amazon’s in many categories, which is part of why brands expand. That gap is closing. Walmart Connect grew 41% in the U.S. in Q4 FY26 and 38% in Q2 FY27, and rising ad revenue arrives as rising costs per click for the sellers funding it. Build your model on current CPCs, not on the arbitrage that existed two years ago.
Start with automatic campaigns to gather keyword data, then move budget into manual campaigns once you know what converts. The same multi-platform PPC logic that governs Amazon applies here, with the caveat that Walmart’s auction is thinner and single bids move positions more.
How Canopy Management Helps
We manage Walmart expansions for brands already performing on Amazon, which is a narrower problem than general marketplace management and a different one than launching from zero.
What that covers: attribute mapping and Item Spec 5.0 migration, Walmart-specific listing copy and imagery, Walmart Connect campaign management, full-service Walmart account management, customer service, and DSP for brands scaling past sponsored ads.
Canopy Management is a full-service omnichannel marketing agency covering Amazon, Walmart, TikTok Shop, Shopify, Meta, and Google. Our partners have generated more than $3.3 billion in revenue, with an average 84% year-over-year profit increase and a 99.1% partner retention rate. Every partner works with the same brand manager for the life of the account.
Add a second marketplace without adding a second workload
Canopy's Partners Achieve an Average 84% Profit Increase!
Start your Walmart expansionFrequently Asked Questions
Yes, if your business is based in one of the countries Walmart has opened the U.S. marketplace to, which now includes Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, South Korea, India, China, Singapore, Vietnam, and several others. When the application asks for a U.S. Business Tax ID, indicate you do not have one and submit the alternate verification form. You still need U.S.-based fulfillment capability or WFS. The country list has expanded repeatedly, so check Walmart’s international seller page rather than relying on a published list.
Pro Seller is an account-level status based on your performance across delivery speed, customer service, price competitiveness, and catalog quality. Walmart+ is a listing-level badge tied to a specific item’s delivery promise. Pro Sellers get faster payouts on eligible balances and discounted shipping labels through Ship with Walmart. You can hold one without the other.
Most brands see meaningful volume between 60 and 120 days after going live, assuming complete attributes and active advertising from day one. Listings launched with sparse attribute data often sit flat for months because they never enter the filtered result sets shoppers use. The single biggest accelerator is finishing your Item Spec work before launch rather than after.
Walmart monitors pricing across the web and can remove your listing from the Buy Box or hide it entirely if it is not price competitive. This catches multi-channel sellers who run Amazon promotions without mirroring them. Build your pricing calendar across both platforms at once, or set guardrails that prevent a promotional price on one channel from suppressing you on the other.
No, not to list products. You need Walmart Brand Portal registration to run Sponsored Brands campaigns and to file intellectual property claims, and that requires a trademark registered with the USPTO. Enhanced item page content is available more broadly on Walmart than A+ Content is on Amazon, which is a real advantage for brands without Amazon Brand Registry.
Use WFS if your fulfillment cannot reliably promise two-calendar-day delivery, since that is now the Walmart+ badge threshold and the badge drives conversion. Fulfill yourself if you already hit two-day delivery, want to avoid splitting inventory across two networks, or sell items WFS restricts. Many brands run both, putting top SKUs into WFS and keeping the long tail seller-fulfilled.
