Krita 5.3.4 ships with Android animation export and drops the vulnerable GIMP import plugin
Krita 5.3.4 went out September 15, 2026, bringing real Android animation export and retiring the security-vulnerable GIMP XCF importer.
Krita 5.3.4 went out today. The team also published a companion build, Krita 6.0.4, at the same time. Most of this is housekeeping. Two of the changes deserve a second look. One concerns Android animation export. The other is a security win disguised as a feature removal. Keep in mind this is a maintenance release, not a feature dump. But the bugs being fixed here are the kind that end your workday badly.
Android finally gets a real export path
The animation export work is the most tangible thing in this build. As the August 2026 monthly report explains, it landed through MediaEncoder and LibAV, with Carsten Hartenfels authoring the merge request behind it.
It's still beta. It's still tablets-only, too, so phone users should probably save their timelapse dreams. The Linux desktop export you're used to is unchanged, by the way.
Why Krita killed the XCF importer
The native XCF import plugin leaned on the xcftools library. That library is out of date, unmaintained, and full of security vulnerabilities, so it was dropped via merge request 2894. Krita now tells you to export out of GIMP and switch to OpenRaster (.ora) when moving files between programs. It's not the flashiest interchange format on the market. At least it isn't a known risk.
5.3 vs 6.0
Krita compiles one source tree two ways. Build it against Qt5 and you get 5.3.4. Build it against Qt6 and you get 6.0.4. Same bugfixes in both cases.
The split exists because Krita is still mid-flight in its Qt5-to-Qt6 transition, and the team's guidance is blunt: "We consider Krita 5.3.4 suitable for productive work; 6.0.4 is, because of the many changes from Qt5 to Qt6 more experimental."
The practical upshot is that 6.0.4 ships no Android builds at all. If the animation export you just read about matters to you, you're landing on 5.3.4 anyway.
That's a relief for a lot of people. The Qt6 migration sounds great on paper. In practice, half the value of this release lives on Qt5.
Speaking of cadence, Krita has been shipping at a breakneck pace across this cycle. 5.3 started March 24, 2026. The next point release arrived roughly six weeks later, then another in May, June, July, and now September. If you've lost track of which 5.3 you're actually running, you're not alone.
The small stuff adds up
There's a pile of crash and stability fixes beyond the headline items. Large EXR files open properly now, and a Windows crash triggered by holding a key while starting a new image is gone. The Comic Manager plugin picked up memory-leak fixes plus better EPUB export.
Artist Arkady Flury keeps quietly filling UI gaps. The new 5.3.4 icons cover the convert, selection-modifier, and close actions, among others. And for those paying for Krita Plus, the Android supporter subscription gained the SK3 pencil bundle on top of the earlier SK1 and SK2 bundles. Not much, but it's free pixels.
Where to grab it
Krita 5.3.4 covers Linux, Windows, macOS, and Android. The Linux AppImage is 364 MB. Windows keeps its 64-bit-only stance: the installer is 158 MB and the portable zip sits at 217 MB. Note the macOS floor has climbed. 5.3.4 now requires macOS 10.15 (Catalina), up from 10.14 (Mojave). If you're still on Mojave, this build simply won't run. The macOS disk image lands at 374 MB and is signed as well. Source tarballs carry signatures too. For Android, tablets are the target. Grab an arm64-v8a APK at 161 MB or the 32-bit armeabi-v7a version at 150 MB.
Head here to download the new release. Krita 6.0.4 follows the same pattern but skips Android entirely.
