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Nishu Kushwaha
Community Manager
Nishu KushwahaCommunity Manager
Community Manager
Sep 9, 2026 6:55 PM UTC

After Effects 26.5 is here!

 

After Effects 26.5 is here! Bringing powerful new features designed to speed up everyday workflows and reduce manual effort.

Leading this release is the new Guides functionality, giving you percentage-based positioning, edge pinning, and custom guide colors for more precise, flexible layouts. Alongside it, you can now keep your propagated Object Matte results cached to disk between sessions, assign color labels to individual effects, and manage your effects in a modernized Effect Controls panel. This release focuses on helping you get more done with fewer steps.

 

What's new in 26.5
New guides functionality
Use the new guides, which support percentage-based positioning, edge pinning, custom guide colors, and improved guide editing controls.
Learn about grids, guides, and rulers ›

 
Disk Caching for Object Matte
Disk caching keeps your propagated Object Matte results even after you close the project, freeing up RAM and speeding up work on long clips.
Learn about Object Matte ›

 
Color labels for effects
Assign color labels to individual effect instances in the Effect Controls panel to organize, identify, and work with your effects more easily.
Learn about color labels for effects ›

 
Effect Controls panel modernization
Use the updated Effect Controls panel, built on a modern framework, to view and manage effects with icon-based controls.
Learn about the Effect Controls panel ›

 

 

Fixed issues in 26.5

This release includes a large number of bug fixes and stability improvements. For the full list, see the official document:

View all fixed issues in After Effects 26.5 ›

 

 

Top features in Beta
After Effects AI Assistant
Describe what you need in the new Assistant panel, and let it organize your project, write and fix expressions, generate images and videos, and more.
Learn more ›

 
Stylize footage with Contour Paint effect
Use the new Contour Paint effect to analyze the contours in your frame, then smear and posterize pixels along those contours for a highly stylized result.
Learn more ›

 
Use layers as material sources
Use animated precomps, solids, images, and videos as materials for 3D objects when working with the Advanced 3D renderer.
Learn more ›

 
Apply materials to 3D text and shapes
Apply Substance materials directly to 3D text and shape layers, replacing default legacy materials with photorealistic or stylized looks.
Learn more ›

 
Editable text from Illustrator layers
Convert Illustrator text to editable text layers, preserving font, size, fill, position, styles, and variable font settings.
Learn more ›

 
Duplicate layers using Alt/Option-drag
Alt/Option-drag a layer to the Composition panel to instantly duplicate it in both 2D and 3D compositions.
Learn more ›

 
Change anchor point in a more efficient way
Effortlessly adjust the anchor point on 2D layers with Quick Set Anchor using the Properties panel or a keyboard shortcut.
Learn more ›

 

 

Here's how you can update your After Effects

👉 Which feature are you trying first? 👉 What's already improving your workflow?

Let us know in the comments!

 

      43 replies

      Majestic_Flair3522
      Participant
      Nov 3, 2026 6:07 PM UTC

      Is sub-pixel guide placement still supported in this version? They now seem to round to the nearest whole number.

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      brilliant_operator78e2
      Participating Frequently
      Oct 28, 2026 2:20 PM UTC

      When was the last time you actually implemented a feature request??? It's all very well Adobe saying AE is small and insignificant to them, but it's part of the one ecosystem you charge a big subscription fee for. It's ridiculous. 

      Translate
      Community Manager
      jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
      Oct 29, 2026 4:23 PM UTC

      Literally the guides feature in this release is a feature request from users. 

      Illustrator import improvements, literal feature request from users.

       

      What is your feature request that we haven’t done?

      Translate
      brilliant_operator78e2
      Participating Frequently
      Nov 4, 2026 2:13 PM UTC

      When you pick a feature to include, do you prioritise the easiest ones to make or the ones people actually want?

       

       

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      Tranquil_Aurora4be1
      Tranquil_Aurora4be1
      Participant
      Oct 27, 2026 10:08 AM UTC

      Great to see the release! For boutique studios and post-production teams balancing high-turnaround commercial deliverables, dot releases like 26.5 usually come down to two metrics: render-farm reliability and interchange speed.

      Faster GPU-accelerated effects and tighter integration across 3D element imports (OBJ/GLTF/USD) make a tangible difference when turning around broadcast-ready motion graphics and commercial typography on tight deadlines.

      We typically keep primary workstations pinned to a verified build until plugins and workflow bridges pass internal testing, but the iterative speed improvements Adobe has been pushing lately definitely help lean pipelines move faster.

      Curious to hear from other teams: are you deploying 26.5 immediately, or running a 2–3 week quarantine window on secondary machines first? you can visit at Film by Him | VFX | CGI | 3D Animation | Editing | Motion Graphics

      Translate
      FILMBYHIM
      Todd_Morgan
      Todd_Morgan
      Legend
      Oct 23, 2026 6:41 PM UTC

      When do you plan to fix how files opened through RECENT or HOME panel save back to where they come from???????????????????????????????? This has been an issue for a decade…. and no, I don’t want to load a script to solve this.

      Translate
      brilliant_operator78e2
      Participating Frequently
      Oct 28, 2026 2:21 PM UTC

      They will ever do it. Not a shred of professionalism across this entire company. No business deserves to fail more than Adobe. 

      Translate
      Community Manager
      jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
      Oct 29, 2026 4:22 PM UTC

      I am sorry we’ve failed you and you think those of us working on After Effects are not professionals or don’t care. 

       

      ​@Todd_Morgan Can you give me an example of where you think the files should save to if not from where they come from? 

      Translate
      Gijs27255873au98
      Participant
      Oct 20, 2026 9:55 AM UTC

      FIX THE GUIDES

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        Community Manager
        jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
        Oct 29, 2026 4:21 PM UTC

        We did… is there something not working for you?

        Translate
        Todd_Morgan
        Todd_Morgan
        Legend
        Oct 29, 2026 5:37 PM UTC

        ..

        Translate
        BHSal
        BHSal
        Known Participant
        Oct 14, 2026 4:02 PM UTC

        Does it have timeline folders or just a load of stuff nobody asked for?

        Translate
          Community Manager
          jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
          Oct 29, 2026 4:26 PM UTC

          Timeline folders is a large piece of work. You might think its just folding layers up. Do you also want the folder to be able to control the contents of the layers, like position, scale, etc? Do you want effects to roll down into the layers in the folder? What happens when you want to shift the rendering order of the layers, but a layer is in a group? There are many questions that need answering and change the way the layer/rendering structure work when we introduce folders. Will we do it? Likely yes, but it needs a lot of thought and iteration. 

          Translate
          brilliant_operator78e2
          Participating Frequently
          Nov 4, 2026 2:18 PM UTC

          Well there's a thread about this in this forum that's years old, so you've had time to think about it. Ultimately you can't expect people to subscribe to use essentially the same software for decades without real modernisation. 

          Translate
          Robbie33734045ti9a
          Robbie33734045ti9a
          Participant
          Oct 11, 2026 6:11 PM UTC

          Did this update fix the forced Object Matte selection simply not working when trying to Rotoscope? If not, is there a way for us to revert back to before Object Matte AI and use normal rotoscoping? 

          Translate
          Community Manager
          jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
          Oct 29, 2026 4:20 PM UTC

          Click and hold on the toolbar icon and use the other tools to do “normal rotoscoping”.

           

           

          Translate
          Davide_Boscolo
          Davide_Boscolo
          Inspiring
          Oct 8, 2026 7:10 AM UTC

          Color labels for effects
          Are these accessible via scripting?

          Translate
          pegeseus
          Participating Frequently
          Oct 2, 2026 11:10 PM UTC

          It’s weirdly difficult to twirl effects values with the mouse now.  As if there’s some sort of movement acceleration enabled.  Values either barely move or move way too much.

          Translate
          chrisbrearley
          Inspiring
          Sep 25, 2026 8:44 AM UTC

          Who in their right mind thought it was a good idea to replace the very useful composite mask icon next to effects in the effects panel, and replace it with the completely useless effects colour label? In over 20 years of using After Effects, at no point would this have ever proved useful. I am now confined to having an ugly grey box next to all of my effcts for eternity. 

          Translate
            Community Manager
            jenkmeister17177426Community Manager
            Oct 29, 2026 4:18 PM UTC

            You can turn it off if it bothers you.

             

             

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