Canva releases Canva Craft, its first in-house image generation model
Canva released Canva Craft, the first image generation model built and trained by its in-house Canva Research lab, which plans a design's layout and text before rendering images at up to 2K resolution, and is available in Canva and through Canva's API.
What happened
- On October 22, 2026, Canva unveiled Canva Craft, an image model developed and trained from scratch by Canva Research.
- Craft works in two stages: a planning model writes out the composition (elements, spacing, scale, hierarchy and any text), then a rendering model produces the image at up to 2K resolution in more than 30 aspect ratios.
- Canva says the approach gives more legible text and precise placement, and that Craft outputs can be turned into editable design layers with its Magic Layers feature.
- Craft is available in Canva's Dream Lab and to developers through the Connect API's image generation endpoint as the model craft_v1_2k.
- Canva reports Craft debuted fourth overall on the DesignArena image leaderboard, and says faster, cheaper Craft-fast and Craft-ultrafast variants are coming.
Why it matters: Small businesses that make their social posts, flyers and menus in Canva get an image model tuned for designs with readable text, built into the tool they already use, plus an API for teams that automate marketing graphics.
Sources
- Canva Newsroom: Introducing Canva Craft canva.com
- Canva Developers Community: Canva Craft in the Connect API community.canva.dev
- TechCrunch techcrunch.com
Checked October 23, 2026 against the sources above. Claims about performance or benchmarks are the company's own unless stated otherwise.