Get WooCommerce featured products in a WP_Query

This is an old question, but you can use wc_get_featured_product_ids() too:

$args = array(
    'post_type'           => 'product',
    'posts_per_page'      => $products,
    'orderby'             => $orderby,
    'order'               => $order == 'asc' ? 'asc' : 'desc',
    'post__in'            => wc_get_featured_product_ids(),
);

$query = new WP_Query( $args );

Just discovered it here. I hope it helps!

Since Woocommerce 3, you need to use a Tax Query instead as featured products are now handled by product_visibility custom taxonomy for the term featured:

// The tax query
$tax_query[] = array(
    'taxonomy' => 'product_visibility',
    'field'    => 'name',
    'terms'    => 'featured',
    'operator' => 'IN', // or 'NOT IN' to exclude feature products
);

// The query
$query = new WP_Query( array(
    'post_type'           => 'product',
    'post_status'         => 'publish',
    'ignore_sticky_posts' => 1,
    'posts_per_page'      => $products,
    'orderby'             => $orderby,
    'order'               => $order == 'asc' ? 'asc' : 'desc',
    'tax_query'           => $tax_query // <===
) );

References:

• Official documentation WP_Query Taxonomy Parameters
• Source code Woocommerce WC_Shortcodes featured_products() function

You could use wc_get_featured_product_ids() function to get the featured product IDs array but using a tax query in a WP_Query is just fine and the right way…

Related:

• Woocommerce meta_query not working for featured products
• Show only featured products in Woocommerce shop page
• Get featured products in Woocommerce 3

It should works.

You can now use wc_get_products with parameter featured set to true. See https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/wiki/wc_get_products-and-WC_Product_Query

$args = array(
    'featured' => true,
);
$products = wc_get_products( $args );

For people looking for getting featured products by category then you can check my notes about this => https://jameshwartlopez.com/plugin/get-featured-products-of-a-category/