As an official Squarespace Circle member, JK Creative was able to attend Squarespace Circle Day, an annual event bringing together web designers, developers, SEO specialists, agencies, and more for seminars and presentations. Our lead senior designer Michaela headed to the New York City Headquarters to attended the conference this year themed “The Source of Design.” Hosted by Puno, Executive Creative Director of ilovecreatives Studio, she heard from speakers such as Will Myers, Dave Hawkins, Rebecca Harpain, Nick Ippolito, and Andy J. Pizza, as well as Squarespace’s own CEO Anthony Casalena. Michaela chatted with creatives from various backgrounds, sat in on insightful sessions, took part in round table discussions, and learned a few things along the way.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
New Improvements to Squarespace 7.1
AI Integration, a Blessing or a Curse?
New Features and Products to come (BIG Announcement!)
1. New Improvements to Squarespace 7.1
SMS Campaigns
You can now curate SMS campaigns directly in Squarespace! SMS offers a direct, personal way to connect with your audience and adds a powerful new channel to your marketing strategy. This addition, along with email campaign management that is already a Squarespace feature, will be a powerful tool to keep your business top of mind with your customers and/or leads.
Now — for our two cents… As a consumer, SMS campaigns are extremely annoying and can fill up your messages inbox quickly. We recommend using this feature sparingly, as to not inadvertently deter your audience.
Advanced Stacks improvements
Stacks now support background colors and images for your stacked blocks, and you can customize the spacing between stacked blocks.
While this is an improvement to stacks, we are still waiting for a true grouping element (similar to our design programs) and the ability to make cards with buttons. Please Squarespace, this feature would be a game changer.
Video aspect ratios
Squarespace’s embed feature now includes a wider variety video block of aspect ratios! Video blocks now automatically detect your video dimensions to accommodate your video files, including vertical videos like Reels or YouTube Shorts.
This is huge! No more wishing that the video would snap to size, your wish has come true.
Image Studio
Generate new images from a written description, edit an existing photo, and build a set of images that look like they belong together with Image Studio, Squarespace’s built-in AI image generator and editor.
We are excited to test this new feature, especially for clients that may no have the budget for a photoshoot or do not have any brand photography in general. This may be a good way to get some interim images until photography is available.
However, if you use Image Studio to create images for a client site, you must disclose it to the company. Some people are full steam ahead when it comes to AI, and some would not like to use it at all. Many of us, we believe, fall somewhere in the middle. Which leads us into key takeaway number two.
Speakers (left to right): Will Myers, Becca Harpain, and Dave Hawkins
2. AI integration, a Blessing or a Curse?
AI is here to stay, so how do we integrate it without losing our integrity? This is a main topic that seems to be discussed at every creative conference in 2026. Will Meyers, one of this year’s Circle Day speakers, mentioned creating a list of non-negotiables to outline where you draw the line between what types of tasks you can outsource to AI and what tasks you will not. When creating this list, he mentioned asking yourself “would anyone care if a person did this?”
While we believe that this question will be valuable in creating a non-negotiable list, we also encourage you to put yourself into that “person” category. Because you are a person, and if you can answer “yes” to that question — even if you are the only person who might care — that still counts.
For the tasks that you are willing to pass of to AI to help you with, if any of these tasks are client project related, should you disclose the use of AI to your client? The general consensus was a resounding yes, you should always disclose AI use to your clients. Some mentioned actually adding a line in their project contracts about the use of AI so that each client is made aware upfront that it may be used. This then gives them the opportunity to deny use, if they so choose.
Michaela sat in on a round take discussion specifically designed to have a conversation with other creatives about how often they use AI in their creative process. She was a bit stunned in some participants who relied on AI to essentially run the majority of their business or creative process. While this seemed to be few and far between the general creatives, it does beg the question: Where do you draw the line?
This exact question leads us into key takeaway number three…
Squarespace President, Kevin Doerr
3. New Features and Products To Come
Let’s start with new features that wil be rolled out in the coming months to Squarespace 7.1.
Gradient Fills in Stack Backgrounds
This is the first time ever that squarespace will have capability to do gradient fills! It will be specific to stack backgrounds (for now). How exciting! Another great design tool in our designer toolbelt, without adding a gradient image background.
Drafts
FINALLY! At long last, we will be able to automatically save pages in Squarespace as drafts. No more live edits to the site after it is published! We will be able to share edits with clients for approval before publishing any changes.
Squarespace MCP
What is this? What does it mean? Squarespace will be deploying a Model Context Protocol (MCP) in the upcoming months. Gemini (Google’s primary generative artificial intelligence) says that “you can think of an MCP like a USB-C port for AI. Just as USB-C gives electronic devices a single, standard way to plug into accessories, MCP gives large language models (LLMs) a standard way to plug into outside data sources without needing custom code for every single connection.” Users will be able to search for available domains, view customer insights, manage orders, and edit your products for online stores using third-party AI tools. They are also working on adding website tool management in the Squarespace MCP to help users manage their site content and track analytics using the AI assistants we already work in.
Essentially this means that we will have an AI agent built directly into our Squarespace sites. Wild! We are very curious how this will function.
And last but certainly not least, drum roll please…
ANNOUNCED NEW PLATFORM - SQUARESPACE FORMA
While we are not sure exactly what we can share about Forma, this is what Squarespace has to say about it…
“At Circle Day, we officially announced Forma, the upcoming AI-native platform for building the custom software and workflows that power your business. Describe your business and Forma builds the website, the custom apps shaped to your workflows, and the agents that operate them, all sharing one live data layer with one unified view.”
This platform is going to complete change the game of how small businesses are run. Essentially creating a one stop shop CRM for companies that sell services online. While we are impressed by this tech advancement, we are a bit skeptical, for now. Until this product is rolled out, we won’t know much more. However, if this comes out as promised, it will become a huge asset to small businesses everywhere. Taking “Vibe Coding” to a whole new dimension, with actual functionality.
Guest Speaker, Andy J. Pizza
What Happens Next?
An overload of information and big news, so what do we do with it all?
First, we want to thank Squarespace for hosting such an incredible day of networking and providing us with insights into new products and features. It was incredible to chat with fellow designers from all around the world, to feel seen in our challenges and struggles, and to inspire one another with our insights and opinions. We were able to discuss not only how to leverage the Squarespace platform for our clients but also address concerns about AI and what is to come.
In getting connected to other creatives and having round table discussions, we were able to pull valuable tidbits like adding AI usage to contracts, jotted down some resources to check out to improve our workflows, and got the gentle reminder that we as the humans are the problem solvers. That will not change, although the path to the solution may.
Interested in JKC creating a new Squarespace site for YOU?
Check out some of our other educational blog posts:
Our lead senior designer, Michaela, attended Squarespace Circle Day 2026 in New York City to connect with fellow creatives and explore what’s next for the platform. From new Squarespace 7.1 features and AI integration to the exciting announcement of Squarespace Forma, we’re sharing our biggest takeaways and what these updates could mean for businesses and web design.