What's New in Maya 2026.2 Update

Welcome to Maya 2026.2 Update! You can access the Maya 2026.2 Update from your Autodesk Account.

For technical details including What's Fixed in this release, see the Maya 2026.2 Update Release Notes.

For more on the evolution of Maya over the years, check out the Maya timeline.

MotionMaker Updates

The MotionMaker updates in Maya 2026.2 deliver comprehensive improvements across editor functionality, performance optimization, and workflow customization. Key enhancements include persistent editor positioning and customizable row colors for improved user experience, character referencing and lightweight meshes for better performance, enhanced machine learning models for more accurate character behavior, and customizable shortcuts for personalized workflow integration. These updates collectively provide a more efficient, responsive, and user-friendly MotionMaker experience while maintaining the robust character animation capabilities that users expect.

What's New in LookdevX for Maya

In LookdevX 1.9.0 for Maya, you now have access to node previews, and can load MaterialX documents into your scene.

What's New in USD for Maya

USD for Maya 0.33 now includes installations of both USD 24.11 and 25.05.

Arnold for Maya 5.5.3

Updates in MtoA since Maya 2026 introduce major performance boosts and add initial GPU support for Toon shading, an interactive HTML-based render stats report, and enhanced USD integration.

Bifrost Rigging Tutorials

Check out the new tutorials on the Bifrost Modular Rigging Framework, by Maya rigging expert Matthew Tucker.

Updates to Animate in Context

A new tutorial video, exploration panel, and improved error messaging and guidance have been added to this release.

What else is new?

This release of Maya also includes the following changes and improvements.

Bifrost 2.14.1.0
Bifrost 2.14.1.0 is a minor feature release with new capabilities, performance improvements, and bug fixes. Among the changes:
  • Bifrost can now use either USD v24.11 or v25.05.01, depending on the version used by Maya.
  • Bifrost is no longer optional when installing Maya. This ensures that it's available when using features and services that rely on Bifrost under the hood.

See the Bifrost Release Notes for a complete list of features and bug fixes included in this version.

Color Management

Input color spaces and aliases have been added to Maya's default OpenColorIO configuration file to support MaterialX. You can find these in the Texture sub-menu wherever you specify an input space.

In addition:
  • The color space used by the default role is now sRGB Encoded Rec.709 (sRGB) instead of sRGB. This is generally better for textures because the image state of sRGB Encoded Rec.709 (sRGB) is scene-referred, while sRGB is display-referred.
  • The scene-linear AdobeRGB space is available in the Linear sub-menu.
  • ACES2065-1 is no longer available as a rendering space. It is generally a poor choice for rendering because of its extremely large gamut. This can easily produce colors that are out-of-gamut for display devices, causes imprecision in color values, and is unintuitive to work with.
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