Blender Foundation

Blender Foundation develops and maintains Blender, a free open-source 3D creation suite covering modeling, sculpting, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing, motion tracking, video editing, and game creation. It serves a global market of artists, designers, animators, VFX studios, educators, and hobbyists. The software is cross-platform, runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is distributed under the GNU GPL license. The foundation also provides documentation, tutorials, and community support through its website and forums.

Blender is notable for being entirely community-driven, with development funded by donations, subscriptions, and corporate sponsorships through the Blender Development Fund. It has produced several open movies (e.g., Sintel, Tears of Steel) that showcase its capabilities and serve as test beds for new features. The foundation’s headquarters are located in the Netherlands, and it operates under the aliases Blender Foundation, Blender, blender.org, and Blender Institute. Structurally, the Blender Institute functions as the foundation’s studio that creates open projects while the foundation oversees governance and licensing.

The Blender Foundation is a nonprofit organization; there is no parent company indicated, and the Blender Institute is an internal entity rather than a separate subsidiary. The organization relies on a global network of volunteer developers and contributors who submit code, report bugs, and help with documentation. Financial support comes from the Blender Cloud subscription service, merchandise sales, and direct donations, which fund full-time developers and infrastructure. The foundation also manages the Blender Market and Blender Add-ons repository to support the ecosystem.