Opera wins two 2025 iF Design Awards

May 15th, 2025

Hey all,

Today, we’re proud to announce that Opera has won two 2025 iF Design Awards: one each for Opera One R2 and Opera One for iOS in the Branding and Communication Design category.

With an international jury of more than 130 independent design and sustainability experts, the iF Awards are one of the most rigorous – and prestigious – design competitions in the world. This past year featured over 11,000 submissions across more than 70 countries, pitting Opera against international heavyweights in every field. The IF Design Awards are a testament to Opera’s commitment to developing industry-leading products, prioritizing innovation and the user experience first and foremost.

Opera One R2

First up, we have our desktop flagship – and Opera’s most powerful and beautiful browser yet – Opera One R2. Designed to challenge default browsers, Opera One R2 offers a beautiful, refined design, advanced features, and AI capabilities that make browsing easier and more enjoyable.

Opera One R2 centers customization, exemplified by the introductions of dynamic, Scandinavian-inspired Themes. Going far beyond simple background images or color changes, Themes offer a complete transformation of the browser’s look and feel. Midsommar, for example, incorporates animations, browser sounds, and music to create a more dynamic browsing experience.

Based on the principles of Modular Design, the browser’s features are crafted with flexibility in mind; this comes to the fore with the introduction of a redesigned Music Player that you can detach and move around your screen without interrupting your browsing. Furthermore, Opera One R2 introduces all-new tools for tab management in Split Screen and Tab Traces: the former lets you work on two tabs simultaneously, while the latter combines with our Tab Islands feature to help you keep track of the tabs you visited most recently.

Finally, Opera One R2 benefits from the best AI features that we’ve been testing through our AI Feature Drops program. A more powerful Command Line interface lets you chat with Aria – our built-in browser AI – from outside of the sidebar chat (by pressing Ctrl+/ or Cmd+/)*. From there, you can additionally hit Tab to engage Page Context mode, which can summarize a webpage’s topic, analyze an article, or even help you compare products when shopping online. If you press the Tab key again, you can use Writing Mode, which uses Aria to help you generate, spellcheck, or tweak any sort of text without requiring you to leave the current webpage – making Aria your personal writing assistance in the browser.

Other exciting AI features in Opera One R2 include Image Generation and Image Understanding, which give Aria – you guessed it – the ability to generate images as well as understand them.

Opera One for iOS

If Opera One R2 was designed to deliver the ideal browsing experience for desktop computers, Opera One for iOS was engineered to do the same for iPhones. An innovative, feature-rich browser that’s faster, Opera One for iOS is a more secure and more customizable browser than what comes pre-installed.

Starting with its design, Opera One for iOS offers a significant upgrade to the UX/UI of the browser to make it more aesthetically pleasing and even easier to navigate. The browser was reimagined to maximize screen space and minimize distractions by only displaying those elements of the browser that the user is engaged with while hiding the rest. For example, the top bar and new Bottom Search bar vanish once you start scrolling on a page. Similarly, the color of the top and status bars adjusts to the hue of the web page you’re visiting.

Navigating through your browser interface has also been overhauled, as Opera One of iOS features three different navigation styles: Standard Navigation, Fast Action Button, and Bottom Search. The all new Bottom Search shifts the search bar to the bottom of the screen, making it easy to manipulate with one hand – especially useful when on the go. Similarly, revamped search functionality also helps you quickly find what you need when you’re out and about: the “swipe to search” functionality lets you simply swipe down to access the search bar, while new search suggestions, based on predictive chips, help you more quickly and easily find what you’re looking for.

Finally, like Opera One R2, Opera One for iOS incorporates all the latest AI features, like Voice Input, Image Generation, and Image Understanding. The result is a smart, powerful browser that can help you with all sorts of tasks when you’re bustling around out there and in need of a hand.

We’re very proud of our products, and extremely gratified to have come away with two iF Design Awards this year – and we’re very grateful for you, our users, who make it all happen! If you haven’t tried them yet, give Opera One R2 and Opera One for iOS a try! And if you’re already using them, keep your eye out for more cutting-edge updates and features.

*In some cases – and depending on your keyboard layout – the Aria Command Line can vary due to different positioning of the forward slash ( / ) character. For example: the layout from the Nordics, Germany, France, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Latam and Turkey, the Command Line shortcut is Ctrl Shift 7 or Cmd Shift 7 – because the forward slash ( / ) is located on the 7. If you’re using the keyboard layout from the US, UK, Poland, India and Ukraine, use Ctrl / or Cmd /.