With over 1.6 million designs created locally last month and over 50% on mobile, Canva introduces tools built for the way South Africans really work.
Canva, the world’s leading visual communications platform, today announced its most significant evolution since its launch in 2013. Unveiled at the company's flagship Canva Create event in Los Angeles, the announcements include Canva Offline, a new AI-powered platform called Canva AI 2.0 and Learn Grid, a built-in education resource center.
For South Africa, the most important announcement is Canva going offline. In a market where over 50% of Canva designs are created on mobile, where prepaid data is the norm and where load shedding remains a daily reality, the ability to create without an internet connection changes what is possible for millions of users.
A powerful new architectural layer
Canva AI 2.0 introduces a powerful new architecture layer that reimagines the entire design process, making it easier than ever to bring an idea to life. This is Canva's biggest shift since bringing design from complex desktop software to the browser and delivers game-changing tools for creatives, businesses, teachers, and users across the entire interface.
Here's what's new:
- Conversational design brings ideas to life with natural language prompts. just desFollow your idea, goal, or rough structure, and Canva AI creates a fully editable design with structure, branding, and layout right from the start.
- agentic orchestra Lets you describe a goal and Canva AI brings it to life through a single conversation, coordinating Canva's entire suite of tools to create everything you need in every format.
- object-based intelligence Enables precise editing without starting over. Ask Canva AI to change something, and only that changes, everything remains fully editable.
- living memory Gets smarter with use. Canva AI learns how you work, keeps projects on brand, and adapts to your preferences over time.
Starting April 16, Canva AI will launch as a research preview, which will be progressively released to the first million people who discover it on the Canva homepage.
intelligent new workflows
Canva AI 2.0 moves beyond design creation to become the system at the center of how work is done. This is what it looks like in practice:
- connectors Pull your existing tools from Slack, Gmail, Google Drive, Zoom, etc. into Canva so you can create meeting summaries, turn customer emails into sales pitches, or create newsletters from your team's activity without switching apps.
- Determination Lets you set tasks once and have Canva AI run them in the background. Produce a weekly batch of social content, translate it into multiple languages, or have briefing documents ready before your morning meetings.
- web research Brings insight straight into your designs. Run research on demand or schedule it in the background, and Canva AI structures the findings into editable content, ready to be refined and shared.
- brand intelligence This ensures that every design starts on brand. Connect your brand data and Canva AI automatically applies your fonts, colors and styles, and can update existing designs in a single step.
- Canva Code 2.0 Lets you describe any interactive idea and Canva AI creates it. Now with HTML import, you can bring any HTML file or AI-generated experience into Canva's visual editor, no rebuild required.
Design without limits, even offline
Canva Offline lets you continue creating even when your Wi-Fi isn't working. Available for free to everyone, it lets you have your designs available offline ahead of time so whether you're commuting, commuting, working through load shedding, or in an area with limited connectivity, you're on track. Simply have your files ready when you're online and any changes will automatically sync as soon as you reconnect.
It works on a huge range of design formats, from documents to social posts to desktop and mobile. Unlike other tools in this space, there is no friction, no extra apps, and no paywalls. Right-click any design on the Canva homepage, select “Make available offline,” and you're good to go.
The launch of Canva Offline adds another dimension to our commitment in South Africa. For a market where prepaid mobile data remains the norm for many users and connectivity can be unpredictable, the ability to create without an internet connection is more than a convenience feature. This is a meaningful step towards making Canva truly accessible to every South African creator.”- Bianca Sibiya, Country Manager, Canva South Africa
In South Africa, more than 1.6 million designs were created on Canva last month alone, with more than 50% of those designs created via mobile, underscoring the connectivity barrier that Canva offline is designed to overcome. This is a meaningful move as unreliable connectivity and high mobile data costs have long been a hindrance for creators, students and professionals.
Learn Grid: A new home for learning
Canva Education is free to students and teachers around the world, and serves over 320,000 South African learners and teachers every month. Today Canva also introduces Learn Grid: a new built-in platform for education. Learn Grid brings together thousands of ready-to-teach resources and AI-powered activity creation into one place. For teachers, students, and parents, this eliminates hours of searching for the right content or creation, allowing users to focus on the right content in a way that makes sense to them.
For teachers, Learn Grid makes it easy to quickly create versions of the same lesson for students at different levels, without having to prepare the content from scratch each time. For students, this shifts the experience from passive reading to interactive activities, games, fill-in-the-blank exercises, data visualizations, and more. And for parents supporting learning at home, it means being able to help with a homework topic and then reinforce it with a tailored interactive activity in the same session.
For South Africa, the promise of the Learn Grid extends further. In a country where access to quality learning resources is uneven across provinces and school types, a free, AI-powered library of educational content has real implications – not just for well-resourced urban classrooms, but also for teachers working with limited materials in over-capacity classrooms in under-served communities. Learning in a way that is visual, relevant and engaging should be something that all students have access to, not just a few.
Canva is expanding its presence across South Africa
South Africa is at the center of Canva's growing commitment to the African continent. Since launching locally in late 2025, Canva has steadily invested in the region, building a local team, developing market-specific product features, and building powerful partnerships focused on education and digital inclusion.
Canva has also expanded local payment options through an integration with Capitec Pay, making it easier for South African users to access Canva's tools that reveal how people actually pay in the market, and the tool is available in over 19 African languages.