Adobe Max 2026's lineup tells us a lot about the company's AI priorities right now
by https://www.creativebloq.com/author/tom-may · Creative Bloq
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I've been to Adobe Max, the company's big event in the USA, a few times now. And I have to be honest, it's an interesting beast.
In one sense, it feels like a standard design conference, with friends, colleagues and people who've only just met in the queue all hanging out on comfy sofas, swapping work stories and side project ideas. So far, so fun.
It's when you enter the official sessions, especially the big keynotes, when it starts to feel less like you're at an OFFF or a SXSW and more like a press conference. New tools, new features will be revealed. There'll be whoops and cheers from the audience.
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The atmosphere is somewhere between a Steve Jobs keynote and a high school pep rally. In fact, at my first attendance in LA in 2018, despite my journalistic neutrality, I found it difficult to resist the compulsion to join in. The energy in the room was that infectious.
Which made one particular moment at the 2023 conference all the stranger.
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The keynote was being given by David Wadhwani, president of Adobe's Digital Media Business, and he was enthusing about generative AI features in Adobe Firefly. Then he stepped up to give the equivalent of a comedian landing a punchline: creators had already generated over three billion images using Firefly since its launch. He then paused, clearly expecting a cheer that would bring the house down.
Only to be met with dead silence.
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It was a moment that encapsulated exactly what most creative professionals think about gen AI. My guess is that most of the people who'd created those three billion images had not been professionals, just people who wanted an easy fix, that might even save them from hiring a creative professional. There was a disconnect there, that Adobe didn't seem to have registered. Not a good look.
So what's the story three years on?
What's changed and what hasn't
This year, Adobe Max takes place in Miami Beach from 10-12 November. While we don't know what will be said, revealed or announced just yet, they have shared the session list. And while there are a massive 208 sessions to wade through, I think it tells us a lot about where their head is right now.
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I've read the whole thing, so you don't need to. And here's what I think it tells us. Adobe is still going all in on generative AI, but unlike in 2023, it's realised you might hate it for doing so. Reading the session guides feels like Adobe telling you "We're not like other AI companies, honest", just a little too often.
Adobe's own guide to the event highlights a 25-session AI track, and almost every AI session comes with this kind of language. The After Effects session "isn't about replacing your craft". The agentic AI session promises "creative partners, not crutches". Phrases like "without sacrificing craft" and "creative control" crop up so often, you feel like you're playing a drinking game.
One session is even titled "Why AI Is Not Our Creative Titanic". It's being given by Laura Jordan Bambach, former D&AD President and an old friend of Creative Bloq, so I'm sure it'll be a great talk. But I'm sorry, I have to question the title. It seems like an odd way to soothe people's worries, given that nobody who sailed the Titanic expected it to sink either.
Who's the main audience?
Look further down the AI session list, and seems to clear to me who Adobe's main audience is for this stuff. It's not the individual designer or freelancer. It's marketing directors, agency bosses and procurement teams who buy enterprise software at scale.
Firefly Graph is pitched on "governance, scalability, indemnification". Omnicom is showing off an "agentic operating model". One agency boasts of "producing over one million assets for brands like eBay, Spotify, and Just Eat". Another asks: "What if your team could deliver bigger, bolder, more premium content — within the same budget, crew size, and timelines?"
The session that puts all this into sharp relief is Tony Harmer's all-day Illustrator lab, which promises "a unique upper hand in mastering traditional skills in Illustrator without the AI". The absence of AI is no longer the norm, but an outlier, a curiosity. Is it just me, or does that not feel a little shocking?
What creatives want
Tony won't be alone in drawing crowds: there are some great people speaking at this event, and I don't want to diminish that in the slightest. In particular, Aaron Draplin's logo day, David Blatner's InDesign tricks, Laurie Ruhlin's styles lab and Lightroom masking deep dives are the kinds of sessions working professionals will gladly queue up for.
My guess is that when AI does turn up in these particular sessions, it'll be the useful, unglamorous kind: cleaning up dodgy audio in Premiere, masking skies in Lightroom, getting InDesign to handle resizes. Because if you ask most working designers, they'll tell you they don't want Adobe software to generate their work. They just want it to take away the grunt work, and be straight about pricing and training data.
My reading of Adobe Max 2026, though, is that while Adobe still cares about those people, the overall direction of travel is towards scale, volume and the enterprise buyer: towards "content" rather than work. Not because Adobe's leaders necessarily want that, but because the brutal logic of delivering shareholder returns will leave them with no other choice.
Ironically, one talk asks: "If everyone can create, who will create what matters?" It's a great question. I might be just a cynical old man shouting at clouds. But from where I'm sitting, Adobe's current answer seems to be: whoever's paying for the enterprise licence.