What’s Penpot working on and what’s coming next?
A roadmap lays out a series of steps to reach a goal, each becoming a commitment. However, when innovating, commitments can be tricky. You’re exploring uncharted territory, filled with uncertainty. Context can shift in a heartbeat, and we learn as we go, which also means that our ideas evolve. Trying to stick to commitments in this environment is an unnecessary recipe for frustration. So, instead of calling this a roadmap, think of it more as an open window into what we’re working on now, what’s coming up, and what are the reasons behind it.
Recognizing that not everyone has time for lengthy readings (we all have those ‘quick’ calls to jump on, right?), I’ll start with this super-brief summary:
What we’re working on
- A new render engine that will dramatically improve Penpot’s overall performance and stability.
- Native design tokens.
- Tons of small and medium quality-life improvements that will enhance the user experience.
What’s coming up
- Component variations.
- Advanced team & project control backoffice
- AI R&D.
- And more…
Let’s dive in for those with a bit more time!
What a ride this year has been!
Penpot 2.0
Not so long ago, this past April 6, 2024, we launched Penpot 2.0—a huge step in our journey. We introduced Grid Layout (a first of its kind!), a revamped component system, and a user interface overhaul (which sparked some interesting conversations, too). This massive update took Penpot to a whole new level, transforming how users interact with it and boosting both the activity and complexity of what people are creating.
A step back to move forward
After that, we realized it was time to take a step back so we could move forward more effectively and keep delivering value to our users. We focused on building a solid foundation to tackle bigger challenges without compromising quality, consistency, or speed—avoiding what we could call the “Frankenstein Syndrome.” So, we spent some time improving things like test coverage, refining the componentization of our design system, and rewriting parts of the codebase.
Full speed
We’re already seeing the benefits of all that groundwork. With the 2.3 release, we launched the long-awaited Plugin System, which is now giving creators the power to expand Penpot’s capabilities in ways we’re just beginning to see. And the next significant update wasn’t far off—we’ve just launched 2.4! This version combines some of the most requested features, like versioning and a viewer-only role, plus a new .penpot format that streamlines the export of files and assets.
A sustainable path to bridge the gap between designers and developers
Keep in mind that these are just ideas, not commitments. This vision is sure to evolve over time.
How do we choose what comes next?
Our guiding star—the vision behind every big decision—is clear: Penpot will bridge the gap between designers and developers. To make that happen, we need to stay sustainable. Everything we’re working on right now revolves around these two key goals: improving designers’ and developers’ adoption, while ensuring Penpot’s long-term sustainability.
Focus areas
Prioritizing at Penpot is a bit more complicated than “one thing at a time”. We’ve learned that we need to balance a diverse range of efforts to make sense of the whole. To achieve this, we map our efforts into four main focus areas (we’ve talked about this framework before, and we’ve been using it for a while):
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Feature Parity: Bridging gaps with leading design tools, ensuring teams transitioning to Penpot have a seamless experience.
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Differentiation: Innovating and introducing unique capabilities that set Penpot apart as a pioneering tool for designers and developers.
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Quality of Life: Enhancing existing features and initiatives focusing on improving the overall product quality—whether it’s performance, accessibility, or user experience.
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Community Growth: Strengthening our thriving open-source community with more opportunities to contribute, connect, and grow. Because we’re not only building a product but also a community.
What are we working on at Penpot?
Our roadmap has always been public. You just have to go to our Taiga project to have a peek at our backlog, issues, and sprints. Talking about sprints, you might notice something new. We used to have only two of them: Definition and Delivery, following a dual track approach. Now you’ll find several delivery sprints. This allows us to work in a very focused way on different, specific, and independent objectives. The team is organized so that the decision-making power is distributed, streamlining frequent deliveries with as few dependencies as possible and flexibility to change over time.
Let’s take a look at the different initiatives that we’re currently developing:
New render engine
As @diacritica expressed when we first announced this shift, relying on the browser for all graphic work fit perfectly with our belief in “standing on the shoulders of giants”—an idea we love as open source fans. Using SVG, an open standard, to render visuals was a smart move then, letting us focus on user-facing challenges. But what worked well in the early days doesn’t quite meet today’s needs, especially when larger and more complex files are the norm. Also, to be able to build more innovative features, we’re twisting the format to a point where using an open standard (which, to be fair, has been barely updated) no longer makes much sense.
We have already started to build a new render engine that will be extremely performant and interoperable by design. Although this will affect every user, it will be transparent in terms of functionality. We’ll share more details soon but, if you can’t wait, you can take a look at its progress.
Native Design Tokens
Users will be able to create, manage, and consume design tokens from a Penpot file and also sync them with third-party tools. Design tokens play a crucial role in bridging the gap between design and development, as they create a common language that is shared across disciplines and technologies. We are aligning with the W3C Tokens standard, making them truly platform agnostic, and fostering collaboration beyond Penpot or any other tool.
We aim for no less than the best native design tokens feature out there. To achieve this, we’ve teamed up with Tokens Studio, the creators of the most popular design tokens plugin in the world.
This sneak peek is already slightly outdated, which is good news 
Design Deal Breakers
We’ve listened to what designers feel is missing in Penpot and put together a curated list of small tweaks and medium features to boost productivity and make the platform even more enjoyable. This includes stuff like multi-step gradients, version history (already released!), comment notifications, board permalinks, and better image handling. We’re also planning a similar effort focused on the developer experience at Penpot. If you have ideas, please let us know here, please.
Initiatives we look forward to in 2025
Variations
Penpot variations will allow the creation and grouping of variations of the same component, keeping some connection between them and sharing some properties. This will make components easy to create and maintain and more intuitive to use and consume. We’re well aware that our community is eagerly awaiting them (they’re known as “variants” in other well-known design tools). We don’t intend to copy pre-existing solutions, but to follow a different approach that will be simpler and give more control to end-users. If you are a specifications nerd, you might appreciate the epic.
Advanced team & project control backoffice
A configuration layer that allows fine-grained control over “who does what and where” in organizations. This will be a paid capability meant for companies needing a high level of control through restrictions.
Penpot is both an open-source project and a company. Balancing the two can be tricky because, while our code is free, we still need to stay sustainable to maintain the product. This feature responds to an upcoming business model that we believe is great because there is no conflict of interest with our community. Our power users will continue using Penpot just like they always have.
AI R&D
A while back, we shared our first AI experiments. Our main insight was that, for AI to truly make a meaningful impact in interaction design, “the reality we’re facing is that there’s still a ton of work to do before anyone can crack this problem” (quoting the post). We didn’t stop there, we kept researching and experimenting, and the quoted insight still holds. The good news is that we now have a much deeper understanding and a clear course of action. It is soon to share details, but we can already say that we are not much into generative AI. Our approach is, let’s say, more in line with good-old machine learning. This will help us focus not on generating outputs, something we’re not very interested in, but on assisting in design processes.
Community call: we want your opinions!
As mentioned earlier, this isn’t a roadmap. We have goals and ideas for different ways to achieve them. This post highlights the most certain plans, I could easily list dozens of exciting ideas we’d love to turn into reality soon. That said, there’s still space for things we haven’t decided on or even thought of yet.
All the initiatives shared here have been shaped and are being built alongside the community, which has always had a direct influence on shaping the product, and we want to keep it that way. My colleague @claragv recently initiated a fantastic discussion on issues and enhancements, and the resulting conversation is pure gold. Now, we’d love to know about equally strong opinions on larger challenges.
So, tell us—what would you add to this not-a-roadmap?
