Off the bat idrk if this belongs in this specific thread persay but it is relating to Animation and I'd say if you're browsing this forum chances are you are familiar with Adobe and Adobe Animate (hell some of you probably still use Flash, I know I do)

Anyway this topic is about Adobe Animate and how we have entered 2026 and despite Adobe announcing and rolling out their Creative Cloud yearly updates Animate has once again been excluded (minus minor bug fixes). This is now the second year in which Animate hasn't gotten a major release, still being on Version 24.

Ffs it was one of the only Creative Cloud apps to not even be given a redesigned splashscren

This is mostly a thread to debate and discuss this. Speculate on what this means for the future of Animate. Adobe has been ignoring Animate for a while, if you go their products line on their website it is at the very bottom right next to Bridge and Audition before the 'See More' button. During Adobe Max it wasn't mentioned or referenced. While the other apps like Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, and more are spotlighted Animate has been largely ignored which is odd to say the least.

I personally wouldn't be surprised if Animate is silently discontinued which would suck considering how influential Flash was to the internet but also Animate has been lagging behind the competition for years and still has it's fair share of issues that weren't addressed even when it was being focused on. However I also wanna see others opinions, what they think about this. With how Adobe has been seemingly radio silent this could really go either way. Who knows maybe Animate 2027 will change the game and become the best piece of animation software ever

I will link to the discussion about this issue on the Adobe forum, just so that NG members who are really interested can see what some of the most devoted Animate users, evangelists and promoters say on this matter:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/animate-discussions/animate-2025/td-p/14914790

My goal is not to divert this conversation, but to give a link to the one place where this has been discussed in detail.

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For a few years (2018-2021) I was a member of the Customer Advisory Board of Animate, the Pre-release Community and during this period did try to convince the team in Bangalore to not do many of the destructive things they did.

Flash was sentenced to death when development was moved from the USA to the graveyard of great software - India.

Then, under the pretence of improving it, it was gradually destroyed by incompetence, lack of vision and chaotic actions.

The whole team should have been fired after the fiasco of AA2020 and the introduction of the so-called Advanced Layers. Since then Animate had been circling in a death spiral; it is a wreck and only very drastic measures taken by Adobe can now save it.

My expectations are that it will be left to slowly rot away in silence. By doing this Adobe have plausible deniability. They will keep offering it as part of the CC package, because many studios and individuals still use it. The goal is to gradually get the user numbers very low, so that there is no danger of law suits when they eventually pull the plug.

Animate still has a lot of potential, but Adobe's track record with Macromedia products is abysmal and it seems that it is destined to follow Director, Fireworks, Authorware and so on down the drain.

ironically that thread is what inspired me to make this one lol. I wanted to see what people in NG thought of is since by this point the Adobe one kind of ran it's course with the latest ones going "yep...still nothing"

It is fascinating reading the rest of your post and I do agree that they're probably trying to slowly kill it.

I agree.