The Freedom to Create

Blender is licensed as GNU GPL, owned by its contributors.
For that reason Blender is Free and Open Source software, forever.
Ian Hubert

Mission

Get the world’s best 3D CG technology in the hands of artists as free/open source software.

Vision

Everyone should be free to create 3D CG content, with free technical and creative production means and free access to markets.


The Organization

The Blender Foundation (2002) is an independent public benefit organization. Its spin-off corporation Blender Institute (2007) hosts the foundation’s offices and currently employs 24 people who work on the Blender software and creative projects to validate and test Blender in production environments.

In 2020 the Institute split in two companies; Blender Institute now solely functions as working company for the Blender Foundation, and the new Blender Studio will contribute to the Blender mission producing content and testing production pipelines.

These organizations support the community of contributors on blender.org. That is where Blender is being made.

Blender Funding
How Blender gets funded.

The Software

Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, even video editing and game creation. Advanced users employ Blender’s API for Python scripting to customize the application and write specialized tools; often these are included in Blender’s future releases. Blender is well suited to individuals and small studios who benefit from its unified pipeline and responsive development process. Examples from many Blender-based projects are available in the showcase.

Blender is cross-platform and runs equally well on Linux, Windows, and Macintosh computers. Its interface uses OpenGL to provide a consistent experience. To confirm specific compatibility, the list of supported platforms indicates those regularly tested by the development team.

As a community-driven project under the GNU General Public License (GPL), the public is empowered to make small and large changes to the code base, which leads to new features, responsive bug fixes, and better usability. Blender has no price tag, but you can investparticipate, and help to advance a powerful collaborative tool: Blender is your own 3D software.

More help is always welcome! From developing and improving Blender to writing documentation, etc, there are a number of different things you can do to get involved.

Affiliations

Blender Foundation is a member of Open Invention NetworkKhronosLinux Foundation and the Academy Software Foundation.

The License

Blender is Free Software. You are free to use Blender for any purpose, including commercially or for education. This freedom is being defined by Blender’s GNU General Public License (GPL).

Read more about the license.