Project AURIONAI Use-Cases Research & Innovation
Alibaba (Qwen)
image generation

Qwen-Image-2.1

Top open-weights image model on Artificial Analysis, non-commercial Qwen Research License; heavy Hugging Face ecosystem of Turbo, GGUF and LoRA derivatives.

Alibaba (Qwen)Alibaba (Qwen)ChinaQwen-ImageFamily
Example image generated by Qwen-Image-2.1 (an illustrated lion dance mascot).
Levelmodel
Classimage generation
Parameters7B
Contextnot in the notes
Released20 Sep 2026
Opennessopen weights restricted
Runs onsingle datacentre GPU
Statusactive

Benchmark Results

vendor-reportedindependent
Artificial Analysis Text-to-Image Arena AA-Image-T2I v2.0generative media
rank shown as 19-23; top open-weights model per AA FAQindependent
1,038
5009001,300

Score in Elo; the axis starts at 500, as Elo has no zero. Higher is better.

rank 19, AA Text-to-Image Arena, overall10 Oct 2026 artificialanalysis.ai
LMArena Text-to-Image Arenagenerative media
preliminaryindependent
1,223 ±7
1,1001,3001,500

Score in Elo; the axis starts at 1,100, as Elo has no zero. Higher is better.

rank 19, LMArena Text-to-Image, overall, updated 7 Oct 20267 Oct 2026 arena.ai
Qwen-Image-Benchgenerative media
Qwen chart only; methodology unreleasedvendor-reported
60.28
03570

Score in score. Higher is better.

Qwen vendor chartSep 2026 datanorth.ai
Where this comes from
Every score names who ran it: vendor-reported, maintainer-run or independent. A rank is shown with the population it was ranked in (gap rule 3).

Lineage

mergesuccessor
Qwen-Image-2512 to Qwen-Image-2.1: merge, low confidenceQwen-Image-Layered to Qwen-Image-2.1: merge, low confidenceQwen-Image to Qwen-Image-2.1: successor, medium confidenceQwen-ImageQwen-ImageAlibaba (Qwen), Aug 2025Qwen-Image-LayeredQwen-Image-LayeredAlibaba (Qwen), Dec 2025Qwen-Image-2512Qwen-Image-2512Alibaba (Qwen), Dec 2025Qwen-Image-2.1Qwen-Image-2.1Alibaba (Qwen), Sep 2026
Alibaba (Qwen)Qwen-Image-2512 is the parent (merge)low confidencepress claim
Alibaba (Qwen)Qwen-Image-Layered is the parent (merge)low confidencepress claim
Alibaba (Qwen)Qwen-Image is the parent (successor)medium confidencenotes
Where this comes from
Parent and child relations from model cards, Hugging Face base_model fields and the genealogy tables of the research notes. The tree shows two generations each way, 4 models. Confidence and evidence are the notes' own.

R&D Topics

Text-to-image foundation models (diffusion and flow transformers)produced by

Identity

Developer
Alibaba (Qwen)
Family
Qwen-Image
Released
20 Sep 2026 sourcessecondary report
Weights published
–
Record checked
10 Oct 2026
Where this comes from
Developer and dates from the research notes. Release date is the vendor's public announcement; weights date is when open weights were published.

Architecture and Size

Architecture
diffusion Single-Stream DiT, 32 layers; Qwen3-VL 8B text encoder
Total parameters
7B sources
Active parameters
–
Checkpoint parameters
–
Context length
not in the notes
Input
text
Output
image
Where this comes from
Parameter counts as the developer states them. Where the checkpoint holds a different total, both are shown (register A16).

Openness and Access

Openness
open weights restricted
Licence
Qwen Research License sources
Access routes
open weights download
Where this comes from
The licence file governs over registry tags and aggregator labels.

Deployment

Runs on
single datacentre GPU
Footprint
Single GPU with CPU offload; VRAM not published
Runtimes
not in the notes
Where this comes from
Deployment tiers and runtimes as named in the notes. Footprint is the notes' figure, not a measurement by AURION.

Indonesia

Indonesian support
not stated
Regional languages
not in the notes
Jakarta hosting
unknown
Languages
not in the notes
Where this comes from
Indonesia fields are carried on every model; unknown is an allowed value.

Industry Use Cases

No industry use case links this model.

Sources

  1. Qwen-Image-2.1 release: Qwen's 7B open-weights image model datanorth.ai https://datanorth.ai/news/qwen-releases-qwen-image-2-1
  2. Qwen/Qwen-Image-2.1 , Hugging Face huggingface.co https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen-Image-2.1
  3. Text-to-Image Models – Hugging Face huggingface.co https://huggingface.co/models?pipeline_tag=text-to-image&sort=trending
  4. AA-Image-T2I v2.0 Leaderboard - Top AI Image Models | Artificial Analysis artificialanalysis.ai https://artificialanalysis.ai/text-to-image/arena/leaderboard-text
  5. Text-to-Image Leaderboard: Best AI Image Generators arena.ai https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text-to-image

To cite this page: Project AURION, AI Use-Cases Research & Innovation, "Qwen-Image-2.1", https://aurion.semai.id/models/alibaba-qwen-image-2-1/, records of October 2026.