Adobe Animate Is Shutting Down to Make Room for AI Ambitions
Adobe has confirmed it is shutting down Adobe Animate, ending a decades-long run for one of the most widely used 2D animation tools. The company announced the decision through updates to its support site and emails sent to customers, stating that Animate will be discontinued on March 1, 2026.
According to Adobe, standard users will continue to receive support until March 2027, while enterprise customers will have extended technical support through March 1, 2029. Users will be able to download the software and access their files until those deadlines. After that, Animate will no longer be available.
This is an obvious move by Adobe to push its existing and potentially upcoming AI products. In an FAQ explaining the shutdown, the company said Animate has existed for more than 25 years and has “served its purpose well,” but no longer aligns with the platforms and workflows Adobe sees as the future. While the statement avoids mentioning AI directly, the message they’re hinting at between the lines is pretty clear.
That explanation has not gone over well with much of the animation community. Many users questioned the decision, asking why the software was not sold to another company instead. Some compared the shutdown to throwing money into a fire, while others took to social media to express frustration, disbelief, and anger. Several pleaded with Adobe to open source the software rather than abandon it entirely. Others warned that the move could disrupt careers, studios, and long-running creative projects built around Animate’s workflow.
The backlash is fueled by the lack of a true replacement. Adobe says Creative Cloud Pro subscribers can use other apps to replace parts of Animate’s functionality. The company points to Adobe After Effects for complex keyframe animation using tools like Puppet, and Adobe Express for simpler animation effects applied to text, images, and video. For many animators, those suggestions fall short.
The matter sparked a question in my mind: What's stopping people from pirating it now? With many companies’ desperate attempts to move to AI, many people have turned to the so-called dark side to reclaim the applications they once loved without the AI clutter. You can almost guarantee that Animate will be pirated more than ever, especially since it has long been a tool people rely on to access old Flash projects, whether for nostalgia or other reasons.
Animate has a long and influential history. It began in 1996 as FutureSplash Animator before being acquired by Macromedia and renamed Flash. Adobe purchased Macromedia in 2005 and later rebranded the software as Adobe Animate in 2015, after Flash began fading from the web. Despite that shift, Animate remained deeply embedded in animation, television, games, and indie creator workflows.