Red Giant 2026.5.0 - July 22, 2026

What’s New

Zoom and Aspherical Lens Support in Real Lens Flares.
Zoom lenses actually zoom now! There’s no more limitation of having to select different individual static focal lengths. All zoom lenses now include a Zoom slider, so you can dial in the exact look you want and even animate the focal length. Aspherical lenses are also now supported, significantly expanding our lens model library to include more modern and cinematic lenses. 44 new lens presets accompany this release.
Trapcode Particular # of systems options.
To help with Particular load and reset times, we have added a preference option to set your maximum number of particle systems that Particular loads with. Options include 2, 4, 8, and the full 16 maximum systems. The lower the number, the faster Particular will load and reset. Note that this preference setting affects all instances of Particular in all projects and requires a restart of After Effects to take effect.
See this FAQ for more information.
Spanish Language Support!
We are excited to expand our native language support to Spanish with this release! All Red Giant plugins will now appear in Spanish for any supported host set to that language.

Fixed an issue in Particular's Light Emitters that caused a crash in the French version of After Effects.
Fixed an issue in Studio where controls were missing after modifying a capsule.
Fixed an issue in Studio that could cause slow performance and slow loading.
Fixed an issue in Studio where capsule details get lost when editing a field.
Fixed an issue in Studio where the tree navigation options need a hover state.
Fixed an issue in Studio where an icon’s color in tree navigation should match the color of the text.
Fixed an issue in Studio where the information Bubbles did not work.
Fixed an issue in Studio where sorting vertical capsules was broken.
Fixed an issue in Studio where applying VFX tools from Studio with no comp or solid
Fixed an issue in RLF where the sample quality dropdown returned the wrong value.
Fixed an issue in RLF where gate flare happens even with the light source pointed away.
Fixed an issue in Depth Generator where the mp4 file framerate from render to comp was not accurate.
Fixed an issue in Universe where clicking Choose Preset caused long loading time for Studio.
Fixed an issue in Universe Array Gun with Effector Shape 2 preset mismatch
Fixed an issue in Universe HUD Components where the HUD Radar Preset segment angle option is broken when set to <= 2.0
Fixed an issue in Universe Luster where the reflection map was broken.
Fixed an issue in Supercomp where time-reversed layer rendered black.

Fixed an issue where After Effects Plug-ins don't display Chinese/Japanese characters in AE 2026.2

Minimum Requirements

Windows with NVIDIA GPU: GPU must be of the Maxwell generation or newer and have at least 4GB of VRAM
Windows with Intel or AMD GPU: Discrete GPU with at least 4GB VRAM and support for OpenCL

Supported Hosts

For a more detailed compatibility overview, visit the Red Giant compatibility table.