Adobe Animate is shutting down next month

Adobe is pulling the plug on Adobe Animate. In a FAQ posted to Adobe’s website, the company says it will stop selling the animation software on March 1st, citing the emergence of new platforms “that better serve the needs of the users.”

Users have until March 1st, 2027 (or March 1st, 2029 for enterprise customers) to access and download files from Animate, as they’ll no longer be available after this time. The app will be available to download until those deadlines, and Adobe will continue providing support during that period.

Adobe Animate’s history dates back to 1996, when FutureWave Software launched the vector graphics application, originally called FutureSplash Animator, as a tool to create vector-based animations. Though Macromedia acquired the tool later that year and renamed it Flash, Adobe purchased the company in 2005 and began calling the app Adobe Flash Professional. Adobe announced plans to rebrand the app to Adobe Animate in 2015 as the web began phasing out Flash.

Though Adobe says Creative Cloud Pro customers can use other apps to “replace portions of Animate functionality,” such as Adobe After Effects or Adobe Express, many users who still use Animate are frustrated with its imminent shutdown. The creators behind the short-form animated series, Chikn Nuggit, write in a post on X that they still use Adobe Animate to make the show. “This decision would not only harm countless jobs in the industry but render so much past creations as lost media,” the post reads. David Firth, the creator of Salad Fingers, also says he still uses the app to make the grotesque series.

Megacharlie, a technical artist for Jackbox Games, adds that the app “is used in many high-budget television cartoon productions, film and animation studios, game studios big and small, not to mention the 1000s of indie creators who still make use of it daily.”