Adobe and Imagineering Collaboration Uses Firefly to Design Disney Park Experiences
Key Facts
Adobe announced on June 16, 2026, a collaboration with Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development to accelerate the design of Disney Parks experiences and the pre-production visualization stage using Firefly Foundry. The official announcement defines a practical scope involving the development of visual designs for park experiences, not a general agreement covering Disney studios or its sports business. Adobe said Firefly Foundry enables companies to work with it to create custom generative models unique to their brands. This is part of deploying AI within a defined creative workflow, where artistic concepts precede later production stages. The collaboration announced in June represents the publicly documented framework between the two parties at this stage.
Adobe said the models designed for Imagineering draw on its private design catalog and are developed using licensed and proprietary assets. This means the customization is tied to materials the company owns or has the rights to use, rather than presenting the model as a general tool separate from Disney content. Disney said the customization is based on more than 70 years of Imagineering work, a design foundation accumulated over the history of developing park experiences. According to the companies, this structure places the protection of creative assets within the model-building process itself. The public announcement did not include details on the collaboration's financial value or its expected impact on revenue.
Among the initial uses announced by Adobe is a model that turns early hand-drawn sketches into finished two-dimensional artistic concepts. The process is intended to take a drawn idea and turn it into a more developed image that can be used in the pre-production visualization stage. The announced models also included a custom image model for Imagineering assets and Disney franchise characters. These applications connect the production of new concepts with the visual materials the company uses to develop its experiences. An Imagineering executive said the technology can compress months of work into days and weeks, referring to a reduction in the time needed to complete design and visualization stages.
Describing the creative goal, Disney said the system "enhances human creativity rather than replacing it." The statement positions the models as supporting teams while keeping human creativity at the center of the process, according to the company. This is consistent with the specific uses Adobe announced, from turning sketches into artistic concepts to customizing images for Imagineering assets and Disney characters. Disney also emphasized that the base model is built on licensed and proprietary assets, then customized using the Imagineering archive spanning more than 70 years. The announcement did not specify a timeline for further stages or subsequent operational results.
The collaboration with Adobe comes amid a separate earlier agreement: Disney announced a three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI on December 11, 2025. The agreement allowed the Sora platform to generate short social videos requested by users and inspired by more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. The announcement said the agreement does not include the images or voices of talent. The companies also said they had committed to safeguards to protect the rights of content owners and creators. This differs from the collaboration announced with Adobe, which focuses on designing Disney Parks experiences and pre-production visualization using Firefly Foundry.