Figma Unveils Design System Upgrades and AI Integration at Schema 2025
Figma made waves during its Schema 2025 event this October by unveiling a suite of new features designed to strengthen design systems for the AI era. Announced online and in person, these upgrades—many rolling out in November—will help teams maintain craft, scale design across brands, and deepen code integration.
Design systems have become central to digital product creation, especially as AI joins human contributors in shaping user experiences. Figma’s latest updates keep design quality high and ensure organizations can respond quickly to new technical demands, broadening participation in design without sacrificing performance or taste.
Overview of Updates
Extended Collections
Extended collections make it easy for organizations to create multi-brand design systems. Teams can offer a core system, then allow designers to apply distinct branding and themes, while inheriting core updates automatically. This keeps products aligned but allows for brand individuality—helpful for larger companies and agencies with multiple products or clients. The feature launches in November.
Slots
Slot support addresses a long-standing pain for component creation. Designers can now freely add new layers within instances—think adding custom dropdown items—without detaching from the parent component. Slot rules ensure that extensions comply with design system standards, improving flexibility while preserving governance. Early access is available to eligible teams.
Check Designs
“Check designs” introduces a new design linter. Mark elements as ready for dev, and Figma recommends the correct variable based on context, making the hand-off between design and development clearer and more consistent. This reduces ambiguity and friction, improving efficiency for organizations on Enterprise plans, with early access open now.
Performance Improvements
A complete rewrite of Figma’s design system architecture has led to dramatic speed boosts—variable updates and state switches are now 30–60% faster. The new foundation also enables large systems with thousands of components to load and respond instantly, supporting both everyday users and those managing extensive libraries. These performance gains are live today.
Code Connect UI
Building on Figma’s “Code Connect,” a new UI lets users connect Figma directly to GitHub and map design components to code files with AI-powered suggestions, no manual coding required. This streamlines setup and adoption, lowering barriers for developers and design teams and making code-design links easier to maintain. This update is now rolling out to Organization and Enterprise users.
Figma MCP Server
The MCP server brings Figma and code context into agentic coding workflows. Out of beta, it allows teams to set guidelines for how AI writes code based on design systems. Teams can choose remote or desktop options, both now supporting FigJam diagram workflows and context linking. MCP is now available for all users, broadening robust design-code integration.
Figma Make and Design Systems
“Figma Make”—the prompt-to-app tool introduced at Config 2025—now supports tighter design system integration.
- Make Kits allow direct import of Figma libraries, auto-generating React components and CSS for rapid prototyping and app building.
- Npm Package Imports let teams bring their own or third-party React components from public/private registries, ensuring the entire design system can power AI-driven app builds. Both are rolling out via early access programs.
Variable Import/Export and Authoring
Native import and export of variables is now supported, aligned with the finalized Design Tokens W3C Community Group (DTCG) standard, streamlining interoperability. Figma also improved variable authoring, letting designers view all subscribed collections inline and create new variables quickly in a full-screen modal, improving clarity and organization.
Expanded Variable Modes
Large teams benefit from increased mode limits: 10 for Professional plans, 20 for Organization, supporting richer theme and state management across products and brands. This update is available now.
Conclusion
Figma’s Schema 2025 updates set a new benchmark for flexible, AI-ready design systems. By handling scale, code integration, and participation seamlessly, Figma is actively shaping how teams innovate and collaborate. As these tools roll out, the focus remains on community-driven improvements and keeping creativity at the heart of digital product development.
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