Blender

On January 2, 1994, Ton Roosendaal wrote the first source files named Blender; the project regards that day as its birthday. The software was initially used in-house at the Dutch animation studio NeoGeoNeoGeoNeoGeo was a Dutch 3D animation studio founded by Ton Roosendaal in the late 1980s; the free and open-source 3D software Blender began as its in-house tool.Open the full entry, and version 1.0 was released in January 1995.⁠[1]

In June 1998, Roosendaal and Frank van Beek founded Not a Number (NaN) to further develop and promote Blender. Its early model let users download the software for free and then pay to unlock certain features.⁠[1]

After NaN closed in early 2002, Roosendaal founded the nonprofit Blender Foundation in May of that year and launched the Free Blender fundraising campaign in July. Community fundraising enabled the foundation to acquire the rights needed to open the source code; on October 13, 2002, Blender was released under the GNU GPL.⁠[1]

Project Orange, launched in 2005, produced an animated short with open-source tools, resulting in Elephants Dream, and released the film and its production assets openly. The Blender Institute, established in 2007, provided a permanent workspace and continued to test creative pipelines through open movie, game and visual effects projects.⁠[1]

The 2.5 project, launched in 2008, redesigned the user interface, tool definitions, data access, event handling and the animation system. Version 2.61 in 2011 introduced the path-tracing renderer Cycles, which became an important part of subsequent rendering work.⁠[1]

Blender 2.80 rebuilt the interface and workspaces, made left-click select the default, and added the real-time renderer EEVEE. Grease Pencil was expanded into a 2D drawing and animation system, allowing 2D strokes to be placed, edited and rendered in 3D scenes.⁠[1][2]

This version also removed the Blender Internal renderer and the Blender Game Engine. The project stated that the Python API had incompatible changes and that existing add-ons and scripts needed to be adapted; the new features and the migration of older workflows therefore came at the same time.⁠[2]

Version 2.92 introduced Geometry Nodes, which builds geometry processing workflows with a node interface. The first release focused on object scattering and instancing, while sculpting, Grease Pencil and video editing also continued to improve.⁠[3]

After Anthropic’s addition to the Development Fund’s list of corporate sponsors raised concerns in the community, the Blender Foundation announced that the funds would be treated as a one-time donation rather than a fund membership. Chairman Francesco Siddi said there should have been more discussion with contributors before the decision was made.⁠[4]

The announcement said the funds would support human-centered development, art and creativity, and that a generative AI policy would be discussed through public channels. The announcement stated at the time that Blender had no integrated generative AI features and no plans for such integration; this statement reflects the project’s official position as of May 2026.⁠[4]

Blender 5.2 LTS was released on July 14, 2026, with support planned until July 2028. New features include experimental node-based hair and cloth physics workflows, an online asset library, and improvements to Cycles, EEVEE, Grease Pencil and the sculpting tools. Experimental features and the stable maintenance commitment of the long-term support release apply separately.⁠[5]

As of September 24, 2026, the official download page listed 5.2.2 LTS, released on September 15, as the latest update in the 5.2 series, while 4.5 LTS was also maintained. Daily development builds are intended for testing and cannot be equated with official stable releases.⁠[6]

The official license explanation distinguishes between source code, complete distributions and created works: the project’s own source code defaults to the GNU GPL v2 or later, and binary distributions combining all components are licensed under the GNU GPL v3 or later; some modules, such as Cycles, carry other compatible licenses. Images, films and .blend files made with Blender are not required to be released under the GPL merely because the software was used.⁠[7]

The Blender Foundation supports the project’s development and open ecosystem; the software, the foundation and the production organizations are related but distinct entities. The Blender name and logo are trademarks of the foundation, are not covered by the software’s GPL license, and are subject to separate brand usage rules on the official website.⁠[1][8]