Nano Banana 2.1 is here: four characters, any scene, same faces

Google's newest image model, Nano Banana 2.1, is now on XinYu. Pick it from the Featured section of the model list on any image node — now 50% off.

What it does best: several characters in one shot, still themselves

In Google's own evaluations, Nano Banana 2.1 is clearly ahead of both Nano Banana 2 and Nano Banana Pro on multi-character consistency. You can attach up to 14 reference images and keep up to 4 characters consistent at once.

We tried it ourselves. First, four character sheets, generated with Nano Banana 2.1:

Then we attached all four as references and put them into three very different scenes:

The freckles, goggles, dreadlocks and wooden hairpin all carry through every scene. The film above is made from these seven images.

How to use it

1. Choose Nano Banana 2.1 on an image node and connect your character references (up to 14).
2. Say who is who in the prompt, e.g. "Reference 1 is Xia, reference 2 is Mo…", then describe the scene and what each person is doing.
3. To edit an image, attach it and describe the change in one sentence; the rest is kept as close to the original as possible.

Also

• Better layouts and more accurate in-image text, including Chinese.
• 1K / 2K / 4K; aspect ratios 1:1, 16:9, 9:16, 4:3, 3:4, 3:2, 2:3, 5:4, 4:5, 21:9, or Adaptive.
• In the CLI and MCP, use nano-banana-2.1.