On 18 February 2026 the Polish cyber_Folks group bought PrestaShop through its subsidiary cyber_Pixel; the seller was the Italian MBE Worldwide (Fortidia). Mikołaj Król, who also leads Sylius, became CEO of PrestaShop. In April the company started a redundancy process in France, and on 1 September Król described the new direction in an open letter.
This article sums up who the new owner is, what has changed and what has not (licence, support, releases), what the letter asks of shops, and what CloudSync is, the data sharing the letter asks shops to enable.
Not a technical person?In plain English: do I need to do anything now?
PrestaShop has a new owner; the shop keeps working the same way. PrestaShop stayed open source, its licence has not changed, and fixes and new versions keep coming. No mandatory step for shops has been announced on the official channels.
The new management asks shops to use the payment solutions of PrestaShop's partners, buy modules on the official Marketplace, and enable CloudSync data sharing. These are requests. CloudSync sends shop data (for example products, orders, customers) to the PrestaShop cloud; customer e-mail addresses in encoded form.
What to do: find out whether CloudSync runs on the shop, and if so, for what. The questions below can be sent to the person who maintains the shop as they are.
Questions for the person who maintains the shop
Is PrestaShop CloudSync (the ps_eventbus module) installed and enabled on the shop? If so, which module or service uses it, and what data does it send? Is it covered in the privacy notice? Which PrestaShop version does the shop run, and is the latest patch release installed?
Who bought PrestaShop?
The seller was the Italian MBE Worldwide S.p.A., which operates as Fortidia; it explained the sale as a realignment of its portfolio. The buyer is cyber_Pixel, a Poznań-based subsidiary of cyber_Folks, which bought 100% of the shares of the Paris-based PrestaShop SA. cyber_Folks owns 79% of cyber_Pixel; the family foundations of Mikołaj Król and Damian Murawski own 10.5% each.
The price was based on an enterprise value of EUR 55 million for PrestaShop; EUR 53,966,609 was paid for the shares on 18 February 2026. The agreement was announced in December 2025. Before closing, French law required the opinion of PrestaShop's employee representatives, and the approval of the Polish competition authority (UOKiK) was also needed.
Who is cyber_Folks?
cyber_Folks is a Polish company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, grown out of a hosting company founded in 2002. Its hosting companies operate in Romania, Croatia and the USA as well as Poland. Its e-commerce branch includes Sylius (another open-source e-commerce platform), the development company BitBag, Shoper (a Polish hosted e-commerce platform) merged in on 1 September 2026, as well as Apilo, Sellintegro and the Romanian Blugento.
In cyber_Folks' own segmentation, Shoper is for small and medium businesses, PrestaShop for small and mid-sized shops, Sylius for mid-market and enterprise shops. According to the company, the group serves more than 700,000 clients. In the first half of 2026, cyber_Folks launched its AI assistant (robo_Folks) for PrestaShop shops on cyber_Folks servers, along with dedicated PrestaShop hosting and an Apilo integration.
Does PrestaShop's licence or support change?
| Area | Status in October 2026 |
|---|---|
| Owner | cyber_Folks (cyber_Pixel), since 18 February 2026 |
| Management | Mikołaj Król CEO, also leads Sylius |
| Licence | unchanged: OSL-3.0 core, AFL-3.0 modules |
| Support | unchanged: 8.2 security fixes, 9.x latest minor |
| Releases | 9.1 in March, 8.2.8 in August, 9.2 in September |
| PrestaShop 10 | details late 2026, no date |
The licence has not changed: the PrestaShop core is OSL-3.0, the modules are AFL-3.0, and the licence file has not been modified since 2022. In March 2026 PrestaShop wrote that it remains fully open source; according to Król's September letter, PrestaShop will remain a "pillar" of open-source e-commerce.
The support policy is the same too: 8.2 gets security fixes until PrestaShop 10 is released, and in the 9 branch the latest minor version gets fixes. According to the public roadmap, more information on PrestaShop 10 comes in the fourth quarter of 2026, with a first look expected at the PS Summit in Lyon on 5 November 2026. When to move from 8.2 is covered in a separate article: PrestaShop 8.2: stay or move to 9?
What does the new management plan for PrestaShop?
In March 2026 PrestaShop announced four directions:
- A stable core: less technical debt, better updates, one-page checkout, more carriers, B2B features.
- Partner services: payments, logistics, hosting and marketing from PrestaShop's partners.
- AI and open source: PrestaShop remains fully open source.
- Community: the developers, agencies and partners building on PrestaShop.
One-page checkout has since arrived in 9.2. According to the summary of the live Q&A on 18 September, native two-factor authentication (2FA) for the back office is also planned; there is no date. PrestaShop and Sylius have appeared at joint events since 2026.
What happened to the PrestaShop team?
On 10 April 2026 PrestaShop started a collective redundancy process under French law (PSE). According to the announcement, the restructuring is not driven by artificial intelligence replacing staff, and shops' contacts and support channels do not change.
According to Król's letter of 1 September, the process is over and "a significant number of people" were let go; the company has not given a number. The reasoning: PrestaShop the company was not profitable, focused or agile enough, and did not capture enough of the value created by the shops and partners building on PrestaShop.
What does the September letter ask of shops?
The letter "Re-founding PrestaShop, with you" is addressed to developers, agencies, partners and merchants. According to the letter, roughly 60% of PrestaShop's revenue comes from the official payment providers and roughly a third from Marketplace purchases. In 2025, 72% of contributions to the code came from the PrestaShop team and 28% from the community. The letter asks for four things:
- Partner solutions: use the payment and other solutions of PrestaShop's partners.
- Official Marketplace: buy modules on the official PrestaShop Marketplace.
- CloudSync: enable data sharing with PrestaShop.
- Contributions: contribute to the PrestaShop code as a developer.
These are requests; no mandatory step for shops has been announced on the official channels. Król himself writes that asking for data sharing in an open-source product is a sensitive topic. His reasoning: product decisions need real usage data, and the company can only attribute revenue to partners when it is tracked.
What is CloudSync, and should it be enabled?
CloudSync sends technical and usage data of the shop to the PrestaShop cloud; it is built on the PrestaShop EventBus (ps_eventbus) module. According to the PrestaShop help center, it is a prerequisite for several PrestaShop services (for example Marketplace synchronisation and analytics).
According to the module's code, it synchronises many data groups: products, orders, carts, customers, stock, vouchers, carriers, installed modules and employees. Instead of the customer's e-mail address, an encoded (SHA-256 hash) version is sent; according to the help center, names and addresses are not sent in clear text either.
Enabling it is a request in the letter. Whether it runs on a given shop can be checked by the maintainer among the installed modules. According to the summary of the 18 September Q&A, PrestaShop plans to have CloudSync collect less data and move to a fully anonymised model; there is no date.
Only for shops on 1.6 and older: the old translation service was shut down on 1 April 2026, new language packs cannot be downloaded, and installed translations stay. Nothing changes for 1.7, 8 and 9.
What should you do now?
- Version: the latest patch release should be installed on the shop (8.2.8 on 8.2).
- CloudSync: find out whether the ps_eventbus module runs on the shop, and which module or service uses it.
- Decision: if it runs, decide whether it stays enabled.
- Planning: for a shop on 8.2, plan the move to 9; details of PrestaShop 10 are expected in late 2026.
PrestaShop upgrade
The shop upgraded together with its theme, modules and data, prepared on a test copy.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the new owner of PrestaShop?
The Polish cyber_Folks group, through its subsidiary cyber_Pixel, since 18 February 2026. The seller was the Italian MBE Worldwide (Fortidia).
Will PrestaShop become paid software?
The licence has not changed, and PrestaShop wrote that it remains fully open source. No such change has been announced on the official channels.
Is enabling CloudSync mandatory?
The letter phrases it as a request; no mandatory step for shops has been announced on the official channels.
Will my shop still get fixes?
The support policy has not changed: 8.2 gets security fixes until PrestaShop 10 is released, and in the 9 branch the latest minor version gets fixes. 8.1 and 8.0 get no fixes.
Will PrestaShop and Sylius merge?
cyber_Folks has not announced this; in its own segmentation the two are separate products for shops of different sizes.
Sources: cyber_Folks: Raport bieżący 4/2026, cyber_Folks: Raport bieżący 34/2025, cyber_Folks completes PrestaShop acquisition, cyber_Folks: struktura grupy, Fortidia sells PrestaShop, PrestaShop Monthly, March 2026, An important message from PrestaShop's leadership, Re-founding PrestaShop, with you, PrestaShop Monthly, back to school 2026, PrestaShop roadmap, PrestaShop LICENSE.md, PrestaShop CloudSync (EventBus), ps_eventbus, Sunsetting translations for legacy PrestaShop versions
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