Adobe has released Premiere 26 and After Effects 26 with AI-powered editing tools and performance upgrades. The timing aligns with the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where 85 percent of premiering films were created using Adobe Creative Cloud. Premiere drops “Pro” from its name, reflecting common industry usage, while maintaining its nonlinear editing capabilities.
The updates focus on workflow efficiency. Premiere 26 introduces Object Mask, an AI tool for tracking moving subjects with hover-and-click precision. Shape masks now track up to 20 times faster. After Effects 26 adds native parametric 3D meshes and access to over 1,300 free Substance 3D materials. Both applications integrate deeper collaboration features through Frame.io V4 and expanded Adobe Stock access.
Adobe Premiere 26 & After Effects 26: Feature Breakdown
Explore the AI-powered masking tools, performance upgrades, and creative features in Adobe’s latest video editing software releases.
Object Mask
The AI-powered Object Mask tool creates precise masks of complex moving subjects. Hovering across the frame displays visual overlays that identify people or objects for masking. Six colored overlay options plus black-and-white alpha view provide preview flexibility.
Refinement tools: Fast lasso and rectangular editing tools add or subtract mask areas. Feathering and expansion controls adjust mask edges and size for accurate compositing.
Shape Masks Upgrade
Redesigned Ellipse, Rectangle, and Pen masks offer improved creative control. Tracking speed increased up to 20 times compared to previous Premiere versions. Masks can be created directly from the toolbar alongside Object Mask.
Advanced tracking: Bi-directional tracking finds optimal starting frames. 3D perspective tracking anchors masks to surfaces like screens, walls, or rotating faces. Live tracking previews show playback during processing.
Frame.io V4 Panel
The Frame.io V4 panel integrates directly into Premiere’s workspace. Users can ingest assets, share sequence cuts, and sync feedback notes without switching applications. Exported sequence versions automatically stack in Frame.io.
Creative Cloud access: Frame.io is included with Creative Cloud subscriptions at no additional cost for collaboration workflows.
Adobe Stock Access
Adobe Stock integration provides direct access to over 52 million video clips within Premiere. Users can browse, preview, license, and import clips without leaving the editing interface. The library includes 92,000 free stock video clips.
Workflow efficiency: Stock footage fills b-roll gaps during editing without switching to external browsers or download managers.
Firefly Boards Import
Firefly Boards assets import directly into Premiere projects. Users can generate storyboard materials, pitch assets, and treatment visuals within Boards, then transfer them to editing timelines with one click.
AI model access: Premiere connects to the Adobe Firefly app, which delivers AI models from Adobe and partners including Google, OpenAI, and Runway.
Name Simplification
Adobe Premiere Pro is now called “Premiere” to reflect common professional usage. The rebrand accompanies the 26.0 release while maintaining all nonlinear editing functionality and professional-grade features.
No workflow changes: The name change does not affect software capabilities, project compatibility, or subscription terms.
Native Parametric 3D Meshes
After Effects 26 creates parametric meshes from scratch within the application. Users can build and customize cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, tori, and planes. Shapes combine to create stylized graphics or photorealistic scene elements.
Advanced lighting: New Spot and Parallel light shadows in Advanced 3D add depth and realism to 3D compositions.
1,300+ Free Substance 3D Materials
Substance 3D materials apply to native meshes and imported 3D models. The materials are customizable with offset, rotation, and scale controls. All material properties support keyframe animation.
Community library: Substance Community Assets provides thousands of materials. Over 1,300 materials are available free for all After Effects users.
Variable Font Animation
The Text Animator enables keyframe animation of all variable font axes. Users can adjust weight, width, slant, wiggle, and custom designer-defined axes through the Properties Panel.
Template integration: Variable font properties work through Essential Graphics panel and Motion Graphics templates for flexible title designs.
Enhanced Vector Workflows
SVG files import as native shape layers with full vector fidelity. Converting Illustrator layers to shape layers preserves gradients and transparency as editable properties. Gradient scale and rotation properties provide additional creative control for fills and strokes.
Animation capabilities: Keyframe color transitions and animate gradient motion using preserved Illustrator gradient data.
Quality of Life Improvements
The new Unmult effect composites footage with solid black or white backgrounds by removing pixels based on brightness thresholds. Three audio effects (Gate, Compressor, Distortion) handle sound processing without external tools.
Platform support: Native WinARM support improves performance on next-generation Windows PCs. Lossless compressed disk caching extends preview durations while using less storage.
Refreshed Preferences Panel
Reorganized preferences provide faster access to composition and project settings. Keyframe referencing in expressions uses simplified syntax. Unicode backend allows running After Effects in languages different from operating system language.
Additional updates: Crop Comp to Layer Bounds command, improved rotation snapping behavior, and new property methods in expressions and scripting.
Related Technology Updates
Availability
Adobe Premiere 26 and After Effects 26 are available to Premiere and Creative Cloud subscribers. The updates can be accessed through the Creative Cloud desktop application. Both applications maintain compatibility with previous project files while adding the new features described in this coverage.
The release timing coincided with the 2026 Sundance Film Festival. Adobe’s announcement emphasized workflow efficiency improvements and AI-powered tools designed to reduce manual editing tasks. The software updates were covered in the official Adobe blog post published on January 20, 2026.
