Software engineers Darragh Burke and Alex Kern share the story behind the creation of code layers to bring design and code together. ​“Building code layers in Figma required us to reconcile two different models of thinking about software: design and code. Today, Figma’s visual canvas is an open-ended, flexible environment that enables users to rapidly iterate on designs. Code unlocks further capabilities, but it’s more structured — it requires hierarchical organization and precise syntax. To reconcile these two models, we needed to create a hybrid approach that honored the rapid, exploratory nature of design while unlocking the full capabilities of code.”

Jamayal makes cool atmospheric illustrations in Figma Draw.

Developer Advocate Akbar Mirza and Product Manager Yarden Katz provide a live update on Figma’s Dev Mode MCP (Model Context Protocol) server, explaining what MCP is, how it works, how to set it up, and how it helps bridge the gap between design and code. They also cover the new support for Annotations, which allows designers to add accessibility, behavior, and content information to their design files, which the AI agent can then use to generate more accurate code. Finally, they discuss the importance of aligning variable names between design and code. Don’t miss the follow-up video where Akbar and Yarden answer viewer questions from the livestream. 

“New in Dev Mode MCP Server: Annotations are included as design context. Generated code now benefits from both the structure of your design and your design intent.”

Ridd shares his new approach for vibe coding a side project. He treats ChatGPT as a CTO and Cursor as an engineer, with the CTO keeping all context about the project and breaking it down into chunks for an engineer to implement. I’ve been using a similar approach for a recent project with lots of moving parts and unknowns and it’s been working well. My only tip is to pick a smarter CTO in the form of an o3 model, maybe even employing Deep Research for the original plan.

Rasmus Andersson shared a few screenshots from the early days of Figma.

In this interview, Jay chats with Ian Guisard who leads design systems for Uber. You will learn how Ian adds new components to the design system, applies variables to reduce component size, deprecates existing components, specs components for developer handoff, handles design system rule breakers, and more.

Developer Advocate Jake Albaugh shows how to bring design context from Figma directly to your agentic coding tools with the new Dev Mode MCP server.

Dylan Field is interviewed by Guy Raz, a host of the How I Built This podcast, ​“where innovators, entrepreneurs and idealists take us through the often challenging journeys they took to build their now iconic companies.” See a few highlights from this conversation in the blog post 7 moments that shaped Figma, as told by Dylan Field.

Figma acquired Payload, an open-source Next.js CMS. James Mikrut, founder of Payload: ​“Figma and Payload together can and will solve a problem that’s been bugging me (and probably all of you) for years. The gap between design and code still exists. Designers create in Figma, then devs recreate in code, then content teams struggle to maintain it all. It’s inefficient and frustrating. And historically, the CMS tends to make it worse. With Figma, we can (and will) solve these problems in new ways without compromising.”

Kris Rasmussen, CTO of Figma: ​“When we announced Figma Sites at Config, we shared that we’ll be rolling out a CMS for it in the months ahead. Figma CMS will make life easier for marketers and designers who need to update website content, and Payload brings all the stuff developers love—a powerful, customizable backend for building scalable websites and apps, plus an intuitive admin panel for editors. By teaming up with Payload, we’re creating something special.”

This is huge! A few months ago, I wanted to use Framer for a marketing website but ended up recommending building a custom website only because its CMS was so lacking. When Figma announced that Figma Sites CMS is ​“coming soon”, I expected something just as barebones in the beginning. Getting a proper CMS in addition to code layers and Figma Make components makes Sites insanely customizable and powerful.

Joey Banks recreated Apple’s new iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 button styles using Figma, complete with their new Liquid Glass material. These buttons are fully editable and use native Figma effects.

Apple slightly updated the corner rounding of their icon template. Time to update all the icons!

“Dive deeper into the new design system to explore key changes to visual design, information architecture, and core system components. Learn how the system reshapes the relationship between interface and content, enabling you to create designs that are dynamic, harmonious, and consistent across devices, screen sizes, and input modes.”

Vercel introduced the new design mode in v0 — quickly tweak generated copy, typography, layout, colors, styling, and mode. These changes do not require spending credits or waiting for an LLM. Tailwind and shadcn/​ui are supported out of the box.

Designer Advocate Alexia Danton shares the team’s favorite prompts, pro tips, and best practices for using Figma Make to help you get the most out of the recently launched prompt-to-code feature.

Romina recorded a quick walkthrough on how to build clickable prototypes using Figma MCP and Cursor.

Elie Majorel shares the playbook of prototyping with AI tools, allowing other designers to spend less time on appearance and more time on impact. ​“One Sunday I opened Miro, sketched a few boxes for a new agent search, and copied the flow into Claude. Claude wrote a clear spec. I pasted that prompt into Lovable, pressed generate, and two hours later a working React repo ran in a sandbox. Engineers forked the code the week after. Leaders clicked the demo and said keep going. Two hours from idea to running product. No Figma layers. No endless handoff.”

Ruxandra Duru works with Google designers focusing on the intersection of color, emotion, and UX design. ​“After years of what we could call a color fixation, I’ve developed a three-step approach to color theory. My secret to making color more pleasurable and intentional — and much less scary — has to do with balancing, relating, and completing your colors.”

Robert Bye keeps sharing lessons he learned at Figma. In part 3, he talks about autonomy, creativity, collaboration, communication, and camaraderie which he saw at Figma’s most inspiring teams daily. ​“Before joining Figma, I experienced far too many teams riddled with people playing politics, jockeying for credit, and optimising for performance reviews. Thankfully, that culture was refreshingly rare at Figma. Instead, most folks genuinely enjoyed collaborating, celebrated each other’s wins, and championed each other’s successes. Whether it was PMs ensuring designers presented their own work to leadership or team leads publicly praising IC engineers for fixing gnarly bugs, ego-free collaboration was consistently modelled.”