Canva has rolled out what it calls its biggest product evolution yet, the Creative Operating System, a comprehensive update that fuses design, AI, and marketing into one connected workspace.
The company says the new platform marks the start of the “Imagination Era,” where technology amplifies creativity rather than replaces it.
“As knowledge becomes more and more accessible, we believe we’re moving from the Information Era to the Imagination Era,” said Melanie Perkins, Canva cofounder and CEO. She added that Canva is “incredibly excited to unveil our biggest launch yet with the all-in-one Creative Operating System.”
Despite its name, this isn’t a traditional operating system. As cofounder Cameron Adams clarified in an interview with The Verge, “We thought about a couple of different phrases and operating system just really resonated with us. It’s a true system of operations.”
In essence, Canva’s new system connects all aspects of creative work, from design and video to branding and analytics, inside one unified platform powered by AI.
A suite of upgrades across design and workflow
Canva’s new system bundles updated visual tools, AI smarts, and brand-building features into a single environment. The company’s official announcement described it as combining “a supercharged Visual Suite, world-first design AI, plus powerful ways to grow your business and scale your brand.”
Among the major updates, Canva introduced Video 2.0, a rebuilt editor designed for creators who want professional-level video results without switching between different apps. It supports both automated AI-powered edits and manual controls with a redesigned timeline.
The platform launched its new Email Design feature, allowing teams to create email campaigns directly inside Canva and export clean HTML to tools like Mailchimp, a long-requested workflow improvement for marketers.
Canva also introduced Canva Forms, a drag-and-drop tool for creating surveys, RSVPs, and data collection forms that sync seamlessly with Canva Sheets. Rounding out the upgrades is “Canva Code meets Sheets,” which introduces interactive data widgets to help users build dashboards, calculators, and learning tools, blending data and design in a single workspace.
The big bet on AI that “gets” design
At the heart of this launch is what Canva calls the “Canva Design Model.” The company claims this is the world’s first AI model explicitly trained to understand the complexities of design, not just generating a static image, but grasping layout, branding, and hierarchy to produce fully editable designs.
This model powers new features like generating entire editable designs from a prompt and creating custom 3D elements and icons on the fly.
This powerful AI now fuels new features across the platform. For instance, AI-Powered Designs lets users generate a complete, editable design, whether it’s a social post or a video, in seconds. Additionally, a new feature called Ask @Canva acts as a creative assistant right inside the editor; users can simply tag @Canva in a comment to receive real-time feedback, generate new visuals, or get smart edits without breaking their flow.
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Canva steps into marketing… properly
In perhaps its biggest expansion, Canva is moving squarely into the marketing world with “Canva Grow.” This new suite is a direct play for marketing teams, allowing them to create ads, publish them directly to platforms like Meta, and track their performance all without leaving Canva.
It also introduces a more sophisticated “Brand System” that bakes a company’s logos, colors, and fonts directly into the editor, ensuring everything created stays on-brand automatically.
Canva also announced that Affinity, a powerful suite of professional-grade design applications it acquired early last year, is now completely free. This opens up high-end photo editing, vector design, and publishing tools to everyone, forever, and connects them seamlessly with the Canva platform for collaboration and sharing.
Canva already serves “more than 260 million monthly active users” and 95% of the Fortune 500. The company is now positioning itself as not just a design tool, but a full-stack creative and marketing platform to rival traditional office apps and pro-editing tools.
ICYMI: Canva wasn’t spared from the recent AWS meltdown. Find out what happened here.