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Lewiz
Lewiz
Inspiring
February 2, 2026

Why is After Effects v 26.0.0 dramatically slowing down all preview and export rendering?

  • February 2, 2026
  • 11 replies
  • 1248 views

Hi everyone, ever since I updated AE to version 26.0.0 I have experienced render times as much as ten times slower than it used to be in version 25.x.x. For now, I have rolled back installation to a 25 version, but I would very much like to keep up with the versions, including all new features.

I read somewhere that I'm not the only one bumping into this problem.

What can I do to solve it? To be clear: I can create a project in v 2026 and it renders terribly slow; when I save it as 25.x version and then switch to AE v2025 everything works at proper render times.

Will there be an update for v 2026 that solves this problem?

      11 replies

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      nishu_kush
      nishu_kush
      Legend
      February 2, 2026

      Hi there,

       

      Sorry to hear about the issue. I’ll be happy to investigate this. As basic maintenance, can you try clearing the media cache and running After Effects Safe Mode for testing? If that doesn’t help, please share the project file with the media so that we can test it on our end. Feel free to share it via DM if you prefer not to share it publicly.

      Looking forward to your response.

       

      Thanks,

      Nishu

        Lewiz
        LewizAuthor
        Inspiring
        February 2, 2026

        Hi Nishu, very happy to hear from you. The issue does not even require a (complex) composition to be recreated; just importing an XDCAM HD 50 PAL 25p MXF file into an empty project and placing that in a new empty composition is enough. I used to do this in the previous AE version (and can still do this successfully in version 25.6.4.) and then simply press the spacebar and the MXF would play realtime, rendering ahead fast enough to experience hardly any stuttering, pausing or buffering. But in version 26.0.0 the video will play for about five seconds, then hang endlessly, seemingly rendering and/or caching, then plays a handful of frames and hangs again for a couple of minutes, then plays some frames again etc. etc.. I have watched both RAM performance and AE disk cache during such a process and it looks like everything stops for a while or something. I don't see any serious CPU activity as well.

        Doing the same with an HD mp4 will speed up the process a little, but it is still like ten times slower than version 25.6.4 works under the same conditions, with the same source file.

        So there isn't much of a project to share here, and the hardware and footage is the same in both cases. I have checked Mercury and GPU settings, preview and render settings and literally everything is set in same way in both my AE versions 25.6.4. and 26.0.0.

        I also noticed that the interface is slower, in particular when I click on a parameter field (like character size, for instance), it takes like two seconds before the parameter becomes editable. Any ideas?

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