RWS at Canva Create 2026 – designing for the world, together
4 mins
You can learn a lot about where creative work is heading by watching how people actually use the tools in front of them.
That’s what makes Canva Create interesting.
This year, RWS is proud to be part of that conversation as Canva’s Creative Localization Partner.
It’s a role that reflects how far the relationship between design and localization has come. Because today, creating something beautiful isn’t enough. It has to work everywhere – across languages, cultures and contexts – from the very first idea.
That’s exactly the challenge we’ve been working on with Canva.
How we support Canva globally
Working with Canva, you get a pretty clear view of what ‘global' actually means in practice.
It’s not a market expansion plan. It’s millions of people using the product every day, in their own language, with their own expectations of what good looks like.
More than 130 million of them aren’t working in English.
And they’re not looking for a translated version of someone else’s idea. They expect something that feels like it was made for them.
That’s where things get harder.
It’s relatively easy to scale templates. It’s much harder to scale relevance. What works in one market can feel off – or just irrelevant – somewhere else, even if the words are technically correct.
We’ve seen that shift firsthand in our work with Canva.
Early on, the focus was speed – getting the platform into more languages, quickly. Now it’s about depth. Making sure the creative itself holds up, market by market, across everything from templates to major campaigns like Canva Create.
This is where creative localization starts to look less like a production step and more like part of the creative process.
Because if it doesn’t land locally, it doesn’t work at all.
What you actually get from Canva Create
Canva Create is designed to feel big.
This year, it’s taking over SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles – thousands of creatives, marketers and teams in one place, all there to see what Canva is launching next and how it’s meant to be used.
The keynote is the headline. Major product announcements, new AI-powered capabilities and a clear view of where the platform is heading next.
But the real value sits around that.
A full program of sessions and workshops, where you can get hands-on with the tools, see how teams are building content at scale and understand how those new features fit into real workflows.
There’s a strong mix of speakers too. Big-name creators like award-winning storyteller, Jon M. Chu, and industry voices like Design Matters’ Debbie Millman on stage, alongside practitioners who are dealing with the day-to-day reality of producing more content, across more formats, for more audiences than ever before.
That’s what gives the event its energy. The balance of inspiration and application.
You can see how AI is being used in creative work right now – where it’s speeding things up, where it’s reshaping processes and where it still needs work. You get a clearer sense of what’s ready to use and what’s still experimental.
And when you step back and look at it all together – the announcements, the sessions, the conversations happening around them – one thing becomes pretty clear.
Creating more content isn’t the hard part anymore.
Making that content work everywhere is.
That’s the conversation we’re there to be part of.
Join the conversation: designing better with AI
At this year’s event, I’ll be joining Jeremy Jones from Intuit Mailchimp and Brendan Vaughan, Editor in Chief, Fast Company, for a panel that gets into the reality behind creative AI: Creative Cheat Code: How Mailchimp and RWS design better with AI.
It’s an honest conversation about what’s working, what isn’t and what we’re all still figuring out.
Because while AI is opening up new possibilities for creative teams, it’s also raising new questions:
- Where does it genuinely improve the work?
- Where does it fall short?
- And how do you scale creativity without losing what makes it truly land?
We’ll be sharing real examples – from the wins that are reshaping workflows to the missteps that taught us just as much.
If you’re experimenting with AI in your creative process, or thinking about how to scale content globally, it should be a useful session to be part of.
What we’re bringing to Canva Create
For us, Canva Create isn’t just about a single session. It’s about being part of a broader shift in how creative work gets done.
Design is no longer created in one place and adapted later. It’s built for global audiences from the start.
That means:
- Thinking about language and culture earlier
- Designing with flexibility in mind
- And using AI in ways that support creativity, not replace it
These are the conversations we’re looking forward to having throughout the event.
Let’s connect
If you’re heading to Canva Create, it would be great to continue the conversation.
Feel free to reach out or connect with me on LinkedIn – always happy to compare notes on what’s working, what’s not and where creative AI is heading next.
Need help connecting with global audiences? Talk to an expert about the best approach for your use case.