Adobe and The Walt Disney Company on November 9, 2026 announced a multi-year strategic alliance to build custom generative AI tools for Disney's creative teams. The joint news release, posted from Miami Beach and Burbank and timed to Adobe MAX, names no individual author. It says Adobe becomes an Official AI Innovation Partner of Disney and will give Disney early access to Adobe Firefly, Adobe Firefly Foundry, Adobe Premiere and Adobe Photoshop, plus dedicated engineering and research staff to support Disney's production pipeline. At the center of the technical collaboration is Firefly Foundry, Adobe's service for proprietary enterprise models. The companies said they will build human-centered, artist-led models trained on Disney properties, including character attributes, environments and visual styles, with the goal of commercially safe, production-ready outputs.
Walt Disney Imagineering Research and Development is already using Firefly Foundry in the theme-park pipeline, according to the release. One model turns hand-drawn sketches into fully rendered two-dimensional concept art. Another generates on-brand, franchise-accurate creative assets. A related Adobe business post said those Imagineering models are developed on Imagineering's own catalog so outputs stay aligned with franchises such as Frozen, Cars, Moana, Lilo and Stitch, and Mickey Mouse. The alliance also extends to The Walt Disney Studios' StudioLAB, where Adobe joins as a StudioLAB Innovation Partner to prototype internal creative workflows, and to ESPN Edge, where the companies said they will look for ways AI can change how ESPN engages sports fans, delivers content and brings its archive to life. Adobe's business blog added that early StudioLAB work will focus on custom models for post-production and visual-effects use cases.
Hannah Elsakr, vice president of generative AI new business ventures at Adobe, said the two companies have collaborated for decades on content pipelines, marketing campaigns and digital experiences in the parks, and that the new chapter is about using AI as an accelerant for artistic vision, creativity and guest engagement. Becca Vodnoy, senior vice president of corporate alliances at Disney, said the alliance gives Disney's storytellers new ways to explore ideas and bring experiences to guests and fans. Public-relations contacts listed on the release are Kevin Fu for Adobe and Bruce Lam for Disney.
The deal is commercial as well as technical. Adobe said it will increase its presence across Disney media platforms and stage activations at Adobe Summit, Adobe MAX and other industry conferences, alongside marketing work tied to Walt Disney World Resort, Disneyland Resort, Disney Cruise Line, ESPN Edge and StudioLAB. Co-innovation projects with StudioLAB and ESPN Edge are already underway, the release said, and further activations will roll out over the multi-year term. The Verge, which first surfaced the story for this pipeline, summarized the same points from Adobe's announcement: proprietary models tailored to Disney intellectual property, Imagineering already using sketch-to-image tools, and collaboration reaching theme parks, the studio innovation lab and ESPN.
The companies did not publish model sizes, training timelines, deployment dates for new Foundry models beyond the Imagineering tools already in use, or financial terms of the alliance. They framed the work as artist-led and commercially safe, without independent audits of training data, labor effects or how generated assets will be reviewed before they reach guests. The verified event is a first-party partnership announcement, corroborated by independent press that reported the same Adobe release, not a shipping consumer product.