Monthly Report - February 2026

The final final 5.2.x release has been made, and the first beta for 5.3.0/6.0.0 is out!

Read on for a look at development news and the Krita-Artists forum's featured artwork from last month.

Development Report

5.2.15 Released

5.2.15, another bugfix release, is out, featuring a few more Android, touch input, and general bug fixes. This is really the last 5.2.x release this time.

Check out the 5.2.15 release post and stay up-to-date!

First Beta for 5.3.0/6.0.0 Released

The next major release will be a dual release; 5.3.0 is built on the familiar Qt5 framework, while 6.0.0 is ported to the newer Qt6 framework. Qt6 allows for better Wayland compositor support on Linux among other things, but unfamiliarity and lack of testing means Krita 6.0.0 will be less stable than 5.3.0. Krita 6 is also not yet available on Android.

The first betas for this release are out. Help out by testing the two years' worth of changes since 5.2 and the Qt6 porting work, and report any bugs you find so they can be fixed before the final release! Learn more in the beta1 release post.

Some of Last Month's Bugfixes

The team has been busy polishing new features and fixing old bugs for the beta release.

Many issues with gradients, layer styles, and resource loading were fixed by Dmitry.

• Layer Styles now use their own copy of gradients, preventing the gradients from unexpectedly changing when the global version is modified, as well as related crashes. (bug 1, bug 2, bug 3, bug 4; change)
• The Bevel-and-Emboss Layer Style now saves patterns correctly. (bug; change)
• Brush presets with embedded resources sharing a name with a different resource are now loaded correctly. (CCbug; change)
• Fixed editing or removing resource bundles causing a database error on startup. (bug; change)

More text fixes by Wolthera:

• Made sure new texts are made with the current foreground color. (change)
• Fixed an issue where light-colored text made Krita stall and then the text disappeared (caused by reading uninitialized data as font metrics). (bug; change)
• Fixed selecting fonts whose full name is the same as their family name. (bug; change)
• Fixed freeze when editing text contour while bound rect snapping is enabled. (change)
• Fixed setting subscript and superscript on the entire paragraph. (bug; change)

The G'MIC filter plugin has been updated by Ivan to version 3.6.6. (change)

On macOS, Krita's G'MIC is now faster, being built with OpenMP's multithreading as was already the case on other platforms. (change)

Community Report

January 2026 Monthly Art Challenge Results

The winner of the "Vintage Travel Poster" challenge is…

Titan by Elixiah

Join This Month's Art Challenge!

For February's theme, last month's winner Elixiah passed the choice of topic to runner-up MossGreenEddie, who has chosen "Alien World Building", with the optional challenge of including food in some way. How might members of an extra-terrestrial society interact? Cook up something out of this world!

Featured Artwork

This month's featured forum artwork, as voted in the Best of Krita-Artists - December 2025/January 2026:

Aging by ShangZhou0

Cat's Eye by _CR

Digital Watercolor Landscapes by daroart37

Photo drawing study: hands by pavuk0.2

Rooster 2025 by z586t

Nominate and Vote For Next Month's Featured Artwork!

Participate in next month's nominations and voting to voice your opinion on the Best of Krita-Artists - January/February 2026.

Krita is Free - But You Can Contribute!

Krita is free to use and modify, but it can only exist with the contributions of the community. A small sponsored team alongside volunteer programmers, artists, writers, testers, translators, and more from across the world keep development going.

If this software has value to you, consider donating to the Krita Development Fund. Or Get Involved and put your skills to use making Krita and its community better!

Additional Changes

Krita Plus (Stable, 5.2.15):

• Gradients: Fix an issue where reloading a gradient removes the transparency, by using premultipled alpha in SVG gradients. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Shortcuts: Prevent Transform/Move Tool move shortcuts from triggering when the tools aren't active, which could override other shortcuts (such as next/previous frame). (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Overview Docker: Fix touch-dragging to pan, by disabling the non-existent context menu. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Tablets: Add workarounds for Xiaomi devices, which can be toggled in Configure Krita -> Tablet Settings: Translate the stylus's Page Up and Page Down buttons into right mouse and middle mouse buttons. Ignore jagged tablet stylus position history. Use a steeper default pressure curve so that it's possible to reach 100% pressure. (change by Carsten Hartenfels)

Krita Plus (Stable pre-release, 5.3.0/6.0.0-beta1):

• Comics Panel Editing Tool: Fix crash and other issues with remove gutter mode. (bug; change by Agata Cacko)
• Transform Tool: Liquify: Fix broken 'Accurate with Instant Preview' when zoomed out, and issues when liquifying on the edge of a selection. (bug 1, bug 2; change by Agata Cacko)
• Transform Tool: Show feedback that hidden or locked layers cannot be transformed, when attempted. (change by Agata Cacko)
• Move Tool: Disallow moving layers hidden by isolation mode. (change by Ricky Ringler)
• Freehand Path Tool: Fix preview not updating when changing color. (change by Luna Lovecraft)
• General: Fix crash when closing image after deleting a vector layer under some circumstances. (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)
• General: Avoid Krita becoming unresponsive due to slow layer thumbnail generation. When thumbnail generation is slow, a warning in the statusbar mentions that the thumbnails have been switched to low quality mode and suggests using the new Image->Purge Unused Image Data action to clean up empty spaces of the image. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)
• Layers Docker: Prevent Ctrl+drag-and-drop from selecting the layer. (change by Luna Lovecraft)
• Layers Docker: Fixes for selecting layers with Shift or Ctrl. (bug 1, bug 2; change by Luna Lovecraft)
• Touch Input: Prevent touch scrolling from triggering context menus. (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• Brush Editor: Fix Texture Options' offset sliders not working after enabling Pattern. (bug; change by Luna Lovecraft)
• Android: Recorder Docker: Remove the default recording folder path to avoid saving to a user-inaccessible appdata directory. The path can be set manually, which will move any existing recordings from the old default folder. (Note that rendering timelapse videos is not possible on Android Krita, but the frames and their document can be copied to another OS and rendered there.) (bug; change by Carsten Hartenfels)
• macOS: Fix lack of standard Qt text translations such as Yes/No buttons and the macOS application menu. (bug 1, bug 2; change by Ivan Yossi)

Krita Plus (Stable pre-release, 5.3.0/6.0.0-beta1+):

• File Formats: HEIF: Fix crash when opening HEIF/AVIF images in YCrBr. (bug; change by Dmitry Kazakov)

Krita Next (Unstable, 5.4.0/6.1.0-prealpha):

• General: Show hi-dpi versions of the recent file thumbnails on the welcome page. (change by Agata Cacko)

Nightly Builds

These pre-release versions of Krita are built every day.

Note that there are currently no Qt6 builds for Android.

Test out the upcoming Stable release in Krita Plus (5.3.0/6.0.0-prealpha): Linux Qt6 Qt5 — Windows Qt6 Qt5 — macOS Qt6 Qt5 — Android arm64 Qt5 – Android arm32 Qt5 – Android x86_64 Qt5

Or test out the latest Experimental features in Krita Next (5.4.0/6.1.0-prealpha). Feedback and bug reports are appreciated!: Linux Qt6 Qt5 — Windows Qt6 Qt5 — macOS Qt6 Qt5 — Android arm64 Qt5 – Android arm32 Qt5 – Android x86_64 Qt5