Blender Foundation is thrilled to announce that Netflix Animation Studios is joining the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron.

This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development, to continuously improve content creation tools for individuals and teams working in media and entertainment-related workflows.

This membership is a significant acknowledgement of Blender becoming more embedded in high-end animation studios’ workflows. I deeply appreciate this strategic initiative from Netflix Animation Studios as an investment in a diverse, public, and open-source friendly ecosystem of creative tools that will benefit the global community of content creators.

Francesco Siddi, CEO at Blender

Netflix Animation Studios’ corporate membership with Blender reflects our ongoing support for open-source software in the animation community. We are proud to be the first major animation studio to support Blender’s continued development and growing adoption by current and future generations of animation professionals.

Darin Grant, SVP Global Technology at Netflix Animation Studios

Netflix is one of the world’s leading entertainment services, with over 300 million paid memberships in over 190 countries enjoying TV series, films and games across a wide variety of genres and languages. Members can play, pause and resume watching as much as they want, anytime, anywhere, and can change their plans at any time. Discover more about Netflix Animation Studios at https://www.netflixanimation.com/

Blender, the world’s most popular free and open-source 3D creation software, offers a comprehensive solution for modelling, animation, VFX, and more. Maintained by the Blender Foundation, it’s the tool of choice for a vast global community of professional artists and enthusiasts, committed to open collaboration and 3D technology innovation.

Blender Foundation and the online developer community proudly present Blender 5.0!

Blender 5.0 is good news across the board. For many, the biggest change is probably the full support for ACES pipelines, improved color management, and HDR capabilities. For others, it might be the new Volumes and SDF nodes in Geometry Nodes. Storytellers will appreciate the new Storyboarding template, if you’re further along in your project perhaps all the new Array or Scatter on Surface modifiers for modeling, the reworked UV Sync, or you may enjoy all the animation and rigging improvements. One thing is certain, everyone will benefit from the 588 bugs fixed.

Explore the release notes for an in-depth look at what’s new!

Watch the video summary on Blender’s YouTube channel.

This work is made possible thanks to the outstanding contributions of the Blender community, and the support of the over 7900 individuals and 41 organizations contributing to the Blender Development Fund.

Happy Blending! 

The Blender Team
November 18th, 2025

At today’s Blender Conference keynote, Ton Roosendaal announced to step down as chairman and Blender CEO per January 1st 2026, passing on his roles to Blender COO Francesco Siddi. New Blender Foundation board positions will also include Sergey Sharybin (head of development), Dalai Felinto (head of product) and Fiona Cohen (head of operations).

Francesco Siddi has been part of the Blender organization since 2012, functioning in many roles including as animator, web developer, pipeline developer, producer and managing Blender’s industry relations.

“We’ve been preparing for this since 2019,” said Roosendaal, “I am very proud to have such a wonderfully talented young team around me to bring our free and open source project into the next decade.”

Ton Roosendaal will move to the newly established BF supervisory board.

More details will be provided later this year.

Amsterdam, 17-09-2025

Blender Foundation

Blender Foundation is delighted to announce that Bolt Graphics, the developer of an upcoming graphics processor to enable faster renderings and simulations for users in the creative, gaming, and research industries, is joining the Blender Development Fund as Corporate Patron sponsor.

This support will be dedicated towards general Blender core development, with the goal of continuously improving content creation tools for individuals and small teams.

Bolt Graphics’ vision of open source tools being a key component of the content creation landscape is strongly aligned with Blender. We are grateful for this support, which enables core development activities that will benefit the entire community.

Francesco Siddi, COO at Blender

It’s important to us that everyone has access to high quality content creation tools no matter their budget. Our team uses Blender everyday to benchmark our technology and create art. I grew up using Blender myself when I had no money to give back, so being able to support Blender at the Patron level now is a dream come true!

Darwesh Singh, Founder, CEO, CTO at Bolt Graphics

Bolt Graphics is a semiconductor startup building the fastest and most efficient graphics processors for rendering, HPC, and gaming. Power consumption continues to rise with minimal performance improvements, resulting in increased cost and negative environmental impact. Our mission is to reduce the barrier of entry for content creation and consumption to enable everyone to easily create, simulate and consume immersive experiences as vividly as they can imagine them.

Blender, the world’s most popular free and open-source 3D creation software, offers a comprehensive solution for modelling, animation, VFX, and more. Maintained by the Blender Foundation, it’s the tool of choice for a vast global community of professional artists and enthusiasts, committed to open collaboration and 3D technology innovation.

Blender Studio has partnered up with GRAMMY Award-winning rock band OK Go, BAFTA-winning filmmaker and animator Will Anderson, and acclaimed designer and artist Lucas Zanotto to bring their track “Impulse Purchase” to life in a spectacular new visual. Watch it HERE. 

Crafted entirely in Blender, the “Impulse Purchase” visual combines Will Anderson’s signature fun and quirky animation style with Lucas Zanotto’s iconic design language. OK Go frontman Damian Kulash controlled the main character in real time via face-capture; unlike the careful determinism of traditional animation, this system captures a live performance.

It began with my love of Lucas Zanatto’s short animated loops — they’re so inventive, so full of joy, always delivering little doses of the kind of wonder we’re always searching for in our own videos.  So I thought the universe flowing from his brain might be the perfect setting for a lyric video, but when I reached out to him, he had a more ambitious project to propose: a ‘live performance’ with me as one of his characters. Suddenly it was a much weirder, more wonderful project than what I’d envisioned. 

OK Go frontman and video director, Damian Kulash

The pair teamed up with Will Anderson to design a dynamic procedural system in Blender for puppeting  a digital character via face-capture software that anyone can use. The clip released today features a performance tracking Damian’s face, but, like all Blender Studio projects, the source files for “Impulse Purchase” are free for all to use and adapt, and the Blenderheads have already started going wild with them.

All of the necessary files, tools, and documentation, are available for download on the Blender Studio website. The project aims to share both the file and the process behind it, so users can not only interact with the main character from the video, but also learn how to create their own interactive animations.

Blender Studio is all about exploring technical and artistic solutions for creative challenges, and this project is a perfect example. We are proud to support and partner with these talented artists, who share Blender’s values of creating and sharing knowledge with the world. 

Blender COO, Francesco Siddi

Blender Foundation is delighted to announce that Wacom, the pioneer of digital pen and tablet technology, announced an expanded its strategic partnership with Blender, the world’s leading open-source 3D creation suite. 

As part of this enhanced relationship, Wacom will upgrade its support to Patron-level sponsorship of the Blender Development fund program. The partnership focuses on the optimization of the pen and touch performance and the development of a next-generation Blender experience for Android tablets – a critical step in making 3D creation more mobile and intuitive for artists, educators, and innovators worldwide.

We see a deep, shared understanding between Blender and Wacom of the transformative value of creative tools. Our joint responsibility and passion for the creative community drives us to enhance how creators interact with their tools – whether in studios, classrooms, or on-the-go.

Nobutaka Ide, Wacom President and CEO

Our collaboration with Wacom is a major step in making Blender more intuitive on pen and touch devices,” said . “It’s about bringing the full power of Blender to where artists are—on tablets, on the move, and beyond the mouse and keyboard.

Francesco Siddi, COO at Blender

Wacom is a global leader in digital pen solutions, offering intuitive tools for writing and drawing. Our products are trusted across creative fields—from studios and classrooms to healthcare—supporting students and professionals alike. Wacom pen technologies also power many pen-enabled PCs, tablets, and phones through partnerships with top tech brands.

Blender, the world’s most popular free and open-source 3D creation software, offers a comprehensive solution for modelling, animation, VFX, and more. Maintained by the Blender Foundation, it’s the tool of choice for a vast global community of professional artists and enthusiasts, committed to open collaboration and 3D technology innovation.

Blender Foundation is delighted to announce PICO as the latest Blender Development Fund Corporate Patron member. As a key contributor to Blender’s OpenXR development, PICO is empowering Blender to support immersive virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) experiences, fostering new creative possibilities for the global 3D community.

This will unlock new productive workflows for artists, empowering them to pursue their creative vision beyond mouse and keyboard.

At PICO, we are committed to supporting the Blender Global Open Source Community and fostering the flourishing 3D creation ecosystem. This partnership allows us to not only enhance 3D creation tools, but to foster a community where every artist and developer can bring their unique immersive vision to life and connect with a global audience through OpenXR.

Jessie Zhang Head of Partnerships at PICO XR

Founded in 2015, PICO is a leading innovator in VR/MR all-in-one technology. Dedicated to bridging connections, enriching lives, and unlocking infinite possibilities, it is building an integrated XR platform that empowers creators, developers, and businesses while inspiring global communities.

For more information, visit PICO’s official website. 

Blender, the world’s most popular free and open-source 3D creation software, offers a comprehensive solution for modelling, animation, VFX, and more. Maintained by the Blender Foundation, it’s the tool of choice for a vast global community of professional artists and enthusiasts, committed to open collaboration and 3D technology innovation.

SIGGRAPH (the premier conference & exhibition on computer graphics and interactive techniques) will take place in Vancouver (CA) at the Vancouver Convention Center, from Sunday 10th August until Thursday 14th August. Additionally, Blender will be featured at DigiPro (with a Keynote on the technology behind the Flow movie, by Martins Upitis and Konstantins Visnevskis), and at the Open Source Days, also with a Keynote by Martins and Konstantins, plus a presentation by Francesco Siddi on open source development.

This year, the team will be back with a delegation and a booth, similar to the conference in LA 2023. At the booth you can expect demos, and a Blender showreel playing on a giant LED wall. Besides that, several events are planned.

SIGGRAPH is always a great opportunity to connect with the industry and the community, and we look forward to attending.

If you are at SIGGRAPH and want to connect feel free to reach out directly via mail (francesco at blender org) or on social media!

Blender Foundation and the online developer community proudly present Blender 4.5 LTS!

Featuring artwork from DOGWALK, the videogame by Blender Studio. Read the announcement.

Blender 4.5 LTS builds on the previous release’s focus on stability, with nearly 500 bugs fixed, while introducing key features that make it ideal for long productions, thanks to two years of support (until 2027!).

Major improvements include full support for Vulkan, faster startup and EEVEE shader compilation, a more flexible compositor (now with a new Grease Pencil pass!), enhancements to the animation timeline, support for importing multiple formats in Geometry Nodes, UV visibility in all modes, a faster Video Sequencer with HDR support, and so, so much more.

Watch the video summary on Blender’s YouTube channel.

Explore the release notes for an in-depth look at what’s new!

This work is made possible thanks to the outstanding contributions of the Blender community, and the support of the over 7500 individuals and 38 organizations contributing to the Blender Development Fund.

Happy Blending! 

The Blender Team
July 15th, 2025