Adobe shuts down legendary Animate software, shifts focus to AI
By Adobe has officially announced it will end support for its flagship 2D animation tool, Adobe Animate, starting March 1, 2026. The move comes as part of a strategic pivot towards artificial intelligence technologies, sparking an outcry from animators who’ve built workflows around the software for decades.
According to Adobe’s support page, enterprise customers will continue receiving technical assistance until March 1, 2029, to help ease the transition, while individual users will lose support a year earlier, in March 2027. The program itself will remain functional for those who already have it installed, but there will be no further updates or bug fixes. In an official FAQ, Adobe explained that the decision reflects the software’s aging paradigm:
“Animate is a product that’s been around for more than 25 years… As technology evolves, new platforms emerge that better serve users’ needs.”
The response from the animation community has been overwhelmingly negative. On X (formerly Twitter), users posted comments like “this is going to ruin my life” and “Animate is the only reason I’m subscribed to Creative Cloud.” One customer openly urged Adobe to release Animate’s source code to the public so the community could maintain it independently. Adobe has not named a direct replacement, only suggesting that some features can be recreated in After Effects (using the Puppet Tool for frame-by-frame animation) or Adobe Express (for simple design element animations).
Experts point out that the writing has been on the wall for Animate for some time: the software was noticeably absent from the lineup at Adobe Max 2025, and a major update never materialized. Alternatives for animators include third-party apps like Moho Animation, Toon Boom Harmony, OpenToonz, or even the free Blender- which has been rapidly expanding its 2D animation capabilities. However, migrating projects and preserving established workflows will be a painful process for thousands of studios and freelancers.
