On July 1, Envato killed the exclusive author model and forced every author onto a flat 50% fee.
On a $59 WordPress theme, after the buyer fee, authors now keep roughly $23–24 — less than 40% of what the customer actually paid.
What happened next was predictable. Almost every top theme raised its price to $69. Some authors created “Classic” forks (maintenance mode with no real innovation), while others launched their own subscription stores and started dual-channel selling. Sales volume, already declining for years, dropped even harder. New author applications are paused.
The old dream of “upload a theme and make passive income forever” is dead.
ThemeForest still has traffic. It still sells tens of thousands of WordPress themes every month. But it is no longer a place where authors build real wealth. It is a place where authors lose leverage.
The smartest WordPress theme authors already understood this. They stopped treating ThemeForest as the destination and started treating it as a funnel.
The future does not belong to people who only sell on marketplaces. It belongs to people who own their customers.
If you’re still fully dependent on ThemeForest in 2026, you’re already behind.
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