Steam Wishlists Gain Custom Categories and Email Gifting
The update turns the wishlist from a private tracking tool into a social and gift coordination tool, and it removes the friends-list requirement for gifting within the same country.
Reporting from 1 source: 4Gamer.net.
Valve expanded Steam's wishlist and gift systems on July 23, 2026. Wishlists now accept user-created categories for sorting games, and notifications can be limited to a single category. Sharing no longer requires the whole list; players can share specific categories or filtered results. Gifting also changed, with purchased games and digital gift cards now deliverable to an email address rather than only to Steam friends.
Email gifting carries a regional limit. The purchaser and the recipient must live in the same country; to gift someone in a different region, the recipient has to be on the Steam friends list, and the price in the recipient's region applies at purchase.
The sharing expansion also feeds into gifting. From a shared wishlist link, a player can select a game or digital gift card to buy directly, and the recipient field in the cart fills in automatically with the wishlist owner's information. The update is intended for cases like compiling the game candidates you want for your birthday.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.