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How to access Affinity for free as a teacher, school, or nonprofit

How to access Affinity for free as a teacher, school, or nonprofit

September 1, 2024

In March, Canva and the Affinity team pledged to make Affinity free for teachers, schools and nonprofits. We’re excited to announce this is now a reality. Here’s how to access it.

At Canva, our mission has always been to make design accessible to more people, and we’re proud to provide easy-to-use, affordable tools to our 190 million-strong community made up of designers and creatives around the world. As part of our efforts to empower every type of designer, team, and organization, in March we joined forces with award-winning professional design software Affinity⁠⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and pledged⁠⁠(opens in a new tab or window) to make it free of charge for registered nonprofits, teachers, and schools. Thousands have signed up since we launched the waitlist in May.

We’ve been busy behind the scenes to make this possible, and today, we’re excited to announce that anyone with an eligible Canva for Education⁠(opens in a new tab or window) or Canva for Nonprofits⁠(opens in a new tab or window) account can access Affinity for free.

Schools and teachers can get started with Affinity here⁠(opens in a new tab or window), and nonprofits can get started with Affinity here⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

Empowering designers

The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in the need for effective, efficient, and compelling visual communication. From teachers creating materials that engage learners or nonprofits needing to stand out to drive meaningful change, the world is an increasingly visual place. As the volume of content and channels increases, designers have become inundated.

Through our Canva for Education⁠⁠(opens in a new tab or window) and Canva for Nonprofits⁠⁠(opens in a new tab or window) programs, we’re proud to already offer premium Canva plans at no cost to schools and nonprofits all over the world. More than 70 million students and teachers plus 600,000 charities and registered nonprofits use Canva, and we’re excited to extend our free offering to include access for eligible teachers, schools, and nonprofits to Affinity’s Designer, Photo, and Publisher. These professional-grade tools will add enormous value, helping millions of students master the craft of professional design and photo editing, and empowering mission-driven organizations to amplify their voices and maximize their impact.

Quote from Ashley Hewson, Affinity CEO: We're proud to work closely with the community as we build this vision. I'm grateful for the success they've given us so far. This is only the beginning.

Professional design tools are traditionally expensive and have steep learning curves, making it hard for school-age aspiring designers, design educators, or those working in organizations where every dollar counts to access sophisticated technology. Affinity shares our vision for powerful simplicity and accessibility with its lightning-fast, easy-to-use suite of creative tools loved by designers and photographers around the world.

Our recent Creativity in Education Report⁠(opens in a new tab or window) highlighted the growing importance of creativity in the job market, with 81% of graduates and 75% of hiring managers emphasizing its role in securing and excelling in jobs. Access to design tools like Canva and Affinity helps build creativity and critical thinking skills that empower the next generation to thrive in the workforce. Alongside access to Canva, providing Affinity to schools for free allows students to learn multiple tools and have the choice of a faster, more affordable professional design alternative when they start their careers.

For nonprofit organizations, cost can be a major prohibiting factor when accessing professional-grade software. A significant part of Step Two⁠(opens in a new tab or window) of our Two-Step Plan is empowering nonprofits, and we know design is crucial when it comes to capturing attention in a visual world⁠⁠(opens in a new tab or window).

A woman on a laptop laying out a design in Affinity Publisher

Affinity's latest: Meet Affinity 2.5

Following another pledge⁠(opens in a new tab or window) we made to accelerate the rollout of new Affinity features, at our Canva Create event⁠(opens in a new tab or window) in May Affinity CEO Ashley Hewson also announced the launch of Affinity 2.5, free for all v2 owners. It includes:

Variable font support to enable super fine-grained control over what your fonts look like.
A new stroke width tool that allows you to edit the pressure profile of any curve for significantly more precision.
A QR Code tool so you can create and add QR codes to any of your documents.
Affinity is the first creative suite to add native Windows ARM64 support. This greatly improves speed and performance on Windows thanks to built-in support for the hardware’s new ARM64 chips, making this already lightning-fast software even faster.