By George Gabriel, founder of DragOn Sampler

For twenty years, the answer to "which sampler should I use?" was easy. Kontakt. Every serious library shipped for it. Every serious composer had it. It was the standard.

Then 2026 happened, but it was a long time coming.

In January, Native Instruments entered preliminary insolvency. The company was then acquired by inMusic, the group behind Akai and others. Layoffs followed, and the UK office was reportedly shut down. Now producers are asking a question nobody used to ask: is the world's most popular sampler still a safe place to develop my sounds?

We don't think Kontakt is going anywhere tomorrow. But this moment exposes something every producer should think about, whatever sampler they use. Here it is.

1. What actually happened

Native Instruments filed for preliminary insolvency in January 2026. inMusic stepped in and bought the company. Reports since then point to significant layoffs and the closure of NI's UK office.

That's the business side. For producers, the headlines added up to one feeling: uncertainty. When the company behind the industry-standard sampler goes through a shake-up like this, people start doing math. How many libraries do I own? How many projects depend on them? What happens if the updates stop?

That's not panic. That's good sense.

Our take? This didn't come out of nowhere. In our view, the previous owners paid far more for Native Instruments than the business could support, and a correction was always coming. The insolvency was the bill coming due.

2. What Kontakt developers have been saying for years

Here's something most of the coverage misses. We built Kontakt libraries for years, and we know a lot of the people who still do. Many of them have been frustrated with the platform for years.

Building for Kontakt has never been simple with KSP, then NKS (Native Kontrol Standard) raised the bar again. Developers who wanted their libraries to sit properly in the NI ecosystem had to conform to it, which meant more tagging, more presets, more mapping, more hoops. All of that is work that has nothing to do with making a library sound better.

We know that frustration firsthand. It's one of the reasons DragOn exists. I spent years building libraries for Kontakt. Eventually it simply cost too much to keep making them that way, so I built a different kind of sampler instead.

When the people building on a platform are tired of it, alternatives start showing up. DragOn is one. And there are more on the way.

Take Koda Sampler, a new sampler built from the ground up for instrument makers. It's backed by Mike Greene of Realitone, and it was shown at NAMM 2026. Koda pitches itself as a way to build full, playable sampled instruments without a programming background. It's currently in early access, free while it's unfinished, and it plans a marketplace where developers set their own prices. It's aimed squarely at Kontakt's developer base.

That's the real story of 2026. It isn't just about one company's finances. Developers are getting choices again, and when developers move, libraries follow.

3. Will your Kontakt libraries stop working?

Short answer: not anytime soon.

Your installed copy of Kontakt keeps working. Your libraries keep loading. Your sessions still open. Nothing about a change of ownership flips a switch on your hard drive.

The longer-term risk is quieter. Software has to keep up with operating systems, DAW updates and new processor architectures. A plugin that stops getting updates doesn't break all at once. It ages. One OS update, one DAW update, one new computer at a time. That's the scenario worth planning for, whatever happens with inMusic's plans.

4. The real problem: your sounds are locked in someone else's format

Here's the bigger point, and it goes way beyond Kontakt.

Most sample libraries today aren't just sounds. They're sounds wrapped in a player. The instrument only exists inside that one piece of software. If the player goes away, the instrument goes with it. You paid for the sounds, but you don't really hold them.

That's fine as long as the player is healthy. 2026 is a reminder that no company is guaranteed to be.

So the real question isn't "is Kontakt safe?" It's "do I own my sounds, or does my sampler?"

5. How to protect your sounds starting today

You don't need to abandon anything. You just need a backup plan that isn't another walled garden.

Keep your source audio. Whenever you make or buy sounds, keep the raw audio files. A folder of well-named WAVs will outlive every plugin you own.

Bounce your favorites. If a patch is central to your sound, render it out. Record the notes, the hits, the textures you actually use. Now that sound lives as audio, not as a patch that depends on one player.

Resample yourself. Print your own processed sounds and treat them as new source material. They're original, they're yours, and they don't depend on anyone's roadmap.

Have a second sampler you actually know. Don't wait for a crisis to learn a new tool. Spend an afternoon with an alternative now, while it's low pressure.

6. What to look for in your next sampler

The articles making the rounds right now list free Kontakt alternatives like Decent Sampler, SoundPaint, TX16Wx and Shortcircuit XT. They're all worth a look. But before you choose, ask one question most roundups skip:

Does it play sounds, or does it help you make them?

A lot of samplers are playback engines. They're great at loading an instrument somebody else built. They're not built for taking a raw recording and shaping it into something new. One respected reviewer even described a popular free player as "more of a playback engine than a full sampler workstation."

If your goal is to stop depending on other people's instruments, you want a sampler that edits. Here's a quick checklist:

• Works with standard audio files. No proprietary lock-in for your source material.
• Edits inside the sampler. Trimming, slicing and silence removal without bouncing out to an audio editor.
• Maps fast. Getting from a folder of hits to a playable instrument should take seconds, not an evening.
• Handles loops and tempo. Loops should sync to your DAW without a fight.
• Organizes sounds into groups. So you can shape parts of an instrument independently.

That's the gap DragOn was built to fill. Most samplers just play sound. DragOn edits it.

The bottom line

Kontakt isn't dead, and this isn't a eulogy. It's a wake-up call.

The safest sound is one you own as audio. The safest workflow is one that doesn't depend on any single company's future. And the best time to build that workflow is now, while everything still works.

Your music should outlive your plugins. Make sure your sounds do too.

Sources: Koda Sampler (kodasampler.com); VI-Control, "Koda Sampler" thread (Jan 2026); MusicTech, "Kontakt's future is uncertain" (Aug 2026); Bedroom Producers Blog, Kontakt alternatives tested (May 2026).