Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
When Blackmagic's CEO Grant Petty spoke about possible future paid updates for DaVinci Resolve during the big, live-streamed product presentation at NAB, we weren't the only ones who pricked up our ears. The rather vague statement understandably caused discussion among Resolve users, so we asked Blackmagic again at the trade fair and received more detailed information.
According to this - and this should please many Resolve users - there will always be a free version of DaVinci Resolve in the future, and a subscription model is also expressly not planned.
However, as part of its efforts to expand AI functionalities, Blackmagic is forced to consider paid Resolve upgrades. Until now, all updates were provided free of charge after the purchase of a Resolve Studio license, which, incidentally, is not a matter of course. The development of computationally intensive AI features, especially generative AI tools, now appears to be significantly more expensive for Blackmagic than previous program extensions.
As the Neural Engine, on which the AI functions are based, is currently only included in the Studio version, practically all AI tools are only available there. This means that any paid AI upgrades would only affect the Studio version anyway.
When Blackmagic's CEO Grant Petty spoke about possible future paid updates for DaVinci Resolve during the big, live-streamed product presentation at NAB, we weren't the only ones who pricked up our ears. The rather vague statement understandably caused discussion among Resolve users, so we asked Blackmagic again at the trade fair and received more detailed information.
According to this - and this should please many Resolve users - there will always be a free version of DaVinci Resolve in the future, and a subscription model is also expressly not planned.
However, as part of its efforts to expand AI functionalities, Blackmagic is forced to consider paid Resolve upgrades. Until now, all updates were provided free of charge after the purchase of a Resolve Studio license, which, incidentally, is not a matter of course. The development of computationally intensive AI features, especially generative AI tools, now appears to be significantly more expensive for Blackmagic than previous program extensions.
As the Neural Engine, on which the AI functions are based, is currently only included in the Studio version, practically all AI tools are only available there. This means that any paid AI upgrades would only affect the Studio version anyway.
