- Cavalry Promotion Tools are Free for Everyone
- Affinity now lets you send designs directly to your Canva branding kit
- Plus new Affinity integrations with Capture One and DaVinci Resolve
I wasn’t expecting this, but Canva just announced that a major piece of creative software will be free for everyone.
Following the decision to make Affinity, the popular photo editor and layout designer, free for everyone forever (I covered the news here), the parent company has pulled the same trick twice.
This time, it is the Cavalry promotion software that is removing subscriptions. All users will now have access to the full range of features for free.
Article continues below.
If you haven’t heard of Cavalry before, it’s a 2D animation software loaded with a host of professional tools covering everything from advertising to game design.
Canva acquired the company in February 2026. So unlike Affinity, which appeared stagnant for fifteen months after being bought by Canva while the company built the new version, the “buy to free model” process has been quick with this one.
The service previously offered a free Starter version and a paid Professional subscription, which has been scrapped.
Of the new release, Canva CEO Pro Design Duncan Clark said: “Motion is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a core element of effective design. We’re excited to offer all creatives access to Cavalry’s powerful procedural tools, not just those that have a dedicated studio behind them.”
And that’s not all, Affinity gets more love.
The main feature of the free software is a new Claude connection, which offers new automation and artificial intelligence tools.
Clark promises that these AI-powered extras will “free creatives from incredibly tedious work—the kind of stuff that used to consume an afternoon—so they can spend more time on the creative decisions that really matter.”
Affinity will now support Brand System. This workflow update allows users to create designs using the software, before sending them directly to the Brand Kit in Canva.
Support for Affinity .af files is also expanding, with Capture One and DaVinci Resolve integrations.
The moves represent a major shift towards offering a full creative service alongside what is being called ‘Canva AI 2.0’.
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