What's New in Affinity: Blend Tool, Scripting and Over 60 Updates
By Steven Van ·
Affinity's September 2026 update adds the Blend Tool, in-app Scripting, a major photo editing upgrade, INDD import and more than 60 features in total.
Affinity has shipped its September 2026 update, which Affinity says brings over 60 new features and improvements across vector, pixel and layout work. The headline additions are the long-requested Blend Tool, in-app Scripting, and what Affinity calls its biggest ever photo editing update.
Affinity says most of the release is free to use, including the core photo, vector and layout tools, while the Canva AI Studio features are unlocked with a Canva premium plan. Work in Affinity is not used to train AI features and files stay stored locally on the device.
- Blend Tool: blends shape, color, opacity, size and position between objects as a live, editable Blend Group, with step and distance controls, single or multiple blend paths and four bias channels.
- Scripting: write, run and debug scripts in the Scripting Studio, save them to a Scripts Library and share individual scripts or categories with other Affinity users; the AI Connector for Claude can help write them.
- Vector tools: diffusion curves as a gradient fill type, G2 curve energy display, corner radius handles on the Node Tool, more Vector Warp presets, persistent dimension lines from the Measure Tool, and compounds created by default.
- Photo editing: deeper RAW development with reusable presets, plus Noise Reduction, Motion Blur Reduction, Mixed Light Correction and SDR to HDR conversion.
- Canva AI Studio: Generative Upscale, Layer to 3D, Scene Decomposition, an AI model selector for generative tools and fully vector Generative Vector output.
- Page layout: InDesign (.INDD) and Microsoft Publisher (.PUB) import, data merge from Canva Sheets, custom Preflight text patterns, missing font highlighting and reading-order-based running headers.
- General: a Feature Finder in the Help menu, create palette from document fills, placing GLB 3D models, and Cavalry import of Affinity files.
The full list of changes is in the release notes, and the overview is in the announcement.
