Steam Updates Gifting Rules And Allows Cross-region Gifting

It's been a while since we received an update to the Steam gifting system, and plenty of elements have been missing, especially as Valve's platform grows ever more. Now, in the latest update to Steam on the 22nd of July 2026, we got much more upgraded functionality to the system, and some highly-requested features that were much-needed.

Here's everything you need to know about the new gifting update!

Guest Checkout

Back in 2024, Valve added the opportunity to do a checkout on Steam as a guest, but at the time, there was a major limitation. People making purchases who didn't have their own accounts could only purchase gift cards and e, but this functionality has been expanded upon.

Now, for those who wish to send a gift as a guest and not have to create an account, there's an option to send a wishlist share link, and the entire purchasing process can be made without the need for an account. This should facilitate purchasing gifts from outside the platform itself, without needing to create an account, add a friend, and go through the whole process, ruining the surprise element. Perhaps better than this, though, is the following point.

Gifts to Email

Now, those who are purchasing a gift can send it through an email rather than have to select a recipient for it. With just the email, users can send specific gifts, and it'll be sent via a claimable link, which means that it doesn't need to be associated with a Steam account.

With just a general email address, users will now be able to send gifts to someone else without needing to have them in their friends list. This functionality does have a few more limitations than traditional gifting, however, so it's worth keeping in mind before making any transactions.

For one, the gift must be claimed within the 30-day window, or it'll automatically be refunded. There's no way to schedule these ahead of time, in case of birthdays or special events, so they'll need to be sent the day of. This is likely to prevent any form of reselling or digital hoarding of discounts.

The other limitation is that the gift recipient must be in the same country as the purchaser. It's an important element to keep in mind, as for those gifting to distant family members, they'll need to find another alternative.

Cross-region Gifting

This is perhaps the most exciting element for current Steam users, and now, the cross-region gifting limitation has been lifted. There are a few caveats, which are meant to prevent misuse by bad actors who use region-hopping to get better deals for titles.

With the restriction lifted, those who are in regions with lower prices will be able to send gifts to others in higher-priced regions. The money will be converted, so the purchaser will have to pay a higher price — the price of the recipient — in order to send the gift. Again, this is to prevent misuse of the regional pricing system, all the while allowing users to gift their friends in different regions.

This is a much-appreciated change for users who are in regionally-priced regions (myself included), who can now gift to others instead of having to rely on gift cards. Due to malpractice, however, users will have to pay a bit extra to ensure that it doesn't get abused as a form to pay less for the same games.

Direct From Wishlist Gifting

The final big change, and another one that should affect current Steam users a bit, is the capability to share wishlist links to friends. From here, purchasers can select gifts to send to friends, and it'll now auto-populate the recipient section to the owner of the wishlist link.

This synergises with the guest checkout, meaning that Steam users can send wishlist links to people who want to give them a gift, have it auto-filled, and reduce the margin of error. Likewise, users don't need to be friends on Steam to send gifts anymore.

Upgraded wishlist functionality allows the gift recipient to send curated wishlist links that are filtered to specific games. This means that, if you have a hefty wishlist (like my wife, with over 400), you can select a few to ask for through the new wishlist link functionality. Or if you have NSFW titles you'd hate if your aunt saw — we see you.

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That wraps up all of the changes to gifting on Steam! It's a pretty robust update that addresses some major issues players from different regions were having, and it's a great quality-of-life addition that is sure to make gifting a more popular practice.