Checkout does not render shipping methods

Hi WooCommerce Team,

I’m reporting what appears to be a core WooCommerce Checkout bug affecting shipping method rendering.

The issue has been confirmed NOT related to my theme (Flatsome) and NOT related to AJAX blocking (verified by hosting).

❗ 

ISSUE SUMMARY

Shipping works perfectly on the Cart page, but does NOT appear at all on the Checkout page.

• No shipping section
• No shipping methods
• No error messages
• The Checkout totals simply show without any shipping row

It looks like the Checkout does not initialize the shipping calculation AJAX, even though all conditions for shipping are met.

🧪 

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

1. Add a physical product to cart
2. Go to /cart → Shipping methods load normally
3. Proceed to /checkout →
   ❌ Shipping block completely missing
   ❌ No shipping method selector
   ❌ No AJAX request triggered to calculate shipping
   ✔ Billing fields load
   ✔ Payment methods load

✔️ 

TROUBLESHOOTING COMPLETED (VERY IMPORTANT)

1. Checkout Page Recreated

• Deleted original Checkout page
• Created new page → added [woocommerce_checkout]
• Assigned in WooCommerce → Settings → Advanced
• Page loads correctly (no 404)
• ❌ Shipping still missing

2. Shipping Configuration Verified

• Zone: Singapore
• Method: Flat Rate (SGD 3.90)
• Product is NOT virtual
• No shipping classes
• No conditional logic
• No other shipping plugins
  ➡️ Shipping works in Cart → confirms the shipping zone logic is correct

3. THEME-INDEPENDENT (CRITICAL)

• Switched to Storefront
• Issue persists identically
• Flatsome support explicitly stated:
  “Same issue happens with Storefront, so it’s not theme-related. It’s a WooCommerce issue.”

➡️ Confirms the problem is in WooCommerce core or checkout logic.

4. Plugin Conflict Test

• Disabled ALL plugins except WooCommerce
• Issue persists
  ➡️ Not caused by 3rd-party plugins

5. AJAX VERIFIED WORKING (CRITICAL)

Hosting (SiteGround) manually checked server logs and confirmed:

• No ModSecurity blocks
• No firewall blocks
• No 403/404 AJAX drops
• No blocked admin-ajax.php calls
• They also offered to disable the whole cache layer temporarily → no change
  ➡️ AJAX is not blocked at server level
  ➡️ But WooCommerce is not triggering shipping AJAX in Checkout

6. Cache Cleared Everywhere

• Browser cache
• SiteGround cache (Purge SG Cache)
• WooCommerce transients cleared
• No effect

7. No custom code & no template overrides

• No code in functions.php
• No overrides in /woocommerce/checkout folder
• No Scripts Manager modifications
  ➡️ Environment is clean

8. Endpoints Verified

• /checkout loads normally
• No 404 on endpoints
• WooCommerce → Status → Tools → Regenerated tables
  ➡️ Endpoint system is functioning

📌 

TECHNICAL OBSERVATION

Since:

• shipping loads correctly in Cart
• shipping zone matches the address
• AJAX is not blocked
• Checkout template is default (tested with Storefront)
• no plugins interfere
• no virtual products
• correct country matching

The issue appears to be:

Shipping block in Checkout is not being generated at all due to a WooCommerce internal condition returning false.

Specifically, this looks like a failure in one of these mechanisms:

• needs_shipping()
• WC_Checkout::get_value() shipping address logic
• show_shipping() logic
• wc_shipping_enabled() returning false only in checkout
• or shipping initialization action not firing:
  
  • woocommerce_review_order_before_shipping
  • woocommerce_review_order_after_shipping

No hooks seem to run because the whole block is missing from the markup.

🙏 

REQUEST

Please treat this as a high-priority bug.

The store cannot launch without working Checkout shipping.