【2026】How to get Adobe Lightroom for free, 2 official ways

Lightroom is a tool for organizing, editing, and developing photos.

It offers powerful features for professionals, such as batch editing using presets, while still being easy to use for beginners thanks to its intuitive slider-based controls.

There are two ways to use Adobe Lightroom for free :

Let’s take a closer look at each of these options.

You can use Lightroom for free for the first 7 days with Adobe’s official free trial.

There are four subscription plans available for using Adobe Lightroom.

A free trial is available with every plan.

To start your free trial, simply select a plan by clicking the “Free Trial” button.

Even during the trial, you’ll have full access to all the features of the full version.

As shown above, you can cancel within 14 days after starting a plan and receive a full refund, meaning you can effectively use Illustrator for free for up to 21 days.

About three weeks should be enough time to try out the main features of Photoshop and get a feel for how it works.

If you want to keep using Lightroom for free, consider becoming a contributor (content seller) on Adobe Stock.

By reaching a certain number of sales within a year, you can qualify for the bonus program, which grants you a free 1-year license for the Photography plan.

Anyone with an Adobe account can become a contributor for free and sell their work created with Lightroom or other tools.

Here are the requirements to qualify for the bonus program:

Once you meet the requirement, it becomes easier to qualify again in the following years –  allowing you to continue using Lightroom for free.

An active contributor is defined as a user who submits and gets approval for more than 150 new assets per year.

The threshold isn’t too high, so it could be a good opportunity to give it a try.

Learn more about the bonus program here.

You can find the special offers such as latest deals, promotions, and discounted plans on Adobe’s official website.

It’s worth checking out if you’re interested.

We’ve explained how you can use Lightroom for free.

Start by taking advantage of the free trial. 

Becoming a contributor on Adobe Stock could open the door to continued free access down the line.