At OSSummit 2025 in Amsterdam, Mattia Basaglia (Principal R&D Engineer at LottieFiles) and Brandon Wilson (Senior Software Engineer at Google) shared an important milestone for the motion design and developer community: the formal standardization of the Lottie animation format.

Their talk, “Establishing an Open Standard for Vector Animation,” charted Lottie’s journey from a plugin experiment into a fully recognized open standard now powering motion across platforms.

Lottie has become one of the most widely adopted vector animation formats—efficient, scalable, and capable of delivering high-quality motion without bloated file sizes or performance trade-offs. But with adoption spreading across web, mobile, and desktop, one challenge stood out: consistency. How do you make sure an animation created in one tool plays the same way everywhere else?

That’s the story behind the Lottie 1.0 specification—and why this talk matters.

🎥 Watch the full session here:

A Brief History of Lottie

Lottie’s origins trace back to 2015, when Hernan Torrisi released Bodymovin, an After Effects plugin that exported animations as JSON. This breakthrough allowed animations to run smoothly on the web through a lightweight player.

Airbnb quickly adopted the format internally, building iOS and Android players that brought scalable vector animations to apps. From there, momentum accelerated: companies built new players and tools, while adoption spread across industries.

By 2024, the ecosystem had matured to the point where standardization was essential. The result was the creation of the Lottie Animation Community (LAC) under the Linux Foundation’s Joint Development Foundation, giving Lottie an official home for open collaboration.

Why Standardization Matters

With so many tools and playback engines in use, designers and developers often ran into inconsistencies. An animation that looked perfect in one environment might behave differently in another. By establishing the Lottie 1.0 specification, the community created a common ground. This release focused on the essentials:

  • JSON schema for machine-readable definitions.
  • Human-readable documentation with examples.
  • IANA registration and the new “.lot” file extension, formally distinguishing Lottie files from generic JSON.

Above all, the guiding principle was backwards compatibility—ensuring that existing animations continue to play correctly across players.

What’s Coming in Lottie 1.1

The work isn’t stopping at 1.0. The roadmap for Lottie 1.1 includes:

  • Interactivity: richer animations that respond to user actions and states.
  • Accessibility markers: built-in support for inclusive design.
  • Text improvements: more robust handling of animated and styled text.
  • Layer effects: expanded support for transformations like color and spatial changes.
  • Player profiles: so playback environments can declare feature support, making validation easier.

Q&A Highlights

The session also featured a lively Q&A with developers and designers in the audience. Key takeaways included:

  • Lottie in AR/VR: While not domain-specific, Lottie already works well in AR experiences, such as animating overlays in mobile AR apps.
  • Lottie vs. SVG: Both are vector formats, but Lottie’s expressive capabilities and integration with design tools have made it the preferred choice for motion.
  • Performance in Embedded Systems: Lottie can run efficiently on embedded devices when tailored players are built for the environment.
    Game Engines: Work is underway to improve integration with engines like Godot, though some implementations still rely on rasterized textures.
    AI-Generated Lottie: Early experiments show promise—tools like LottieFiles Creator already allow prompts to generate and animate vector graphics.

Get Involved

The Lottie Animation Community is actively seeking feedback and contributions. Designers, developers, and toolmakers are always invited to explore the specs, roadmaps, and tools—and help shape the future of motion.