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In a recent published interview with French publication Phototrend.fr, a pretty big bit of information came from Canon themselves. It doesn’t sound like the lack of third-party autofocus lenses for the RF mount has anything to do with Canon.
Full Frame Sigma RF Lenses
While I touched on it in the interview, I think the comment made by Canon executive Go Tokura is worth its own small article for the search engines. Canon says that it’s up to Sigma to make full-frame lenses.
As we know, Canon has been dragged through the mud for years because there are no third-party autofocus full-frame lenses available for the RF mount. Though a few did slip through. Soon after the EOS R system was announced in 2018, Samyang did release a few autofocus full-frame lenses. They were simply EF lenses with a mount swap for the most part. Canon quickly asked Samyang to stop selling the lenses, and that was that.
We have seen Nikon go after Vitrox and others for producing full frame Z mount lenses without permission, but the Z mount does have a few more third-party full-frame options than the RF mount.
Opening the Mount
The quote in question from Go Tokura says that Canon doesn’t differentiate between APS-C and full-frame lenses when it comes to their approval process for third-party manufactuers.
We don’t really differentiate between full-frame and APS-C in this regard, and we don’t communicate publicly on this subject. I think this observation comes from an outside perspective, based on the fact that third-party lens manufacturers are currently only involved with APS-C.
Go Tokura https://phototrend.fr/2026/03/interview-canon-cpplus-2026/
Why on earth did it take Canon so long to say this? If they did in the past, I think pretty much everyone missed the memo. I doubt they were doing Sigma a favour, and it certaintly hasn’t helped Canon’s own marketing. Shooters have been yelling from the rooftops that they’re switching brands because they can’t get some of the cool Sigma lenses.
Why hasn’t Sigma made any full frame RF lenses?
That’s a good question and I can only hypothesize. Obviously no one at Canon or Sigma is going to answer an email from Canon Rumors.
The RF Mount is Complex
The RF mount is a pretty special mount in the camera world. When Canon launched the EOS R system in 2018, they did say at the time the mount had a lot of technical potential and that they were going to be able to do things they never could with the EF mount, and be able to do things none of the other mounts out there at the time could do.
Sigma has released RF-S versions of their crop sensor prime lenses. They’re all very good and perform quite well. They fill a void in Canon’s own line up of APS-C lenses.
There could be things the RF mount is capable of that we haven’t seen yet. The latest innovation being the auto-iris.
If you’re going to release lenses for the RF mount for full frame shooters, I imagine Sigma wants to utilize all the technology that is available.
Which leads to….
Canon executives made it clear that they do not collaborate with third-party lens makers in any way. They have no idea what Sigma or Tamron will be releasing down the road. There are no restrictions on what lenses are “allowed” to be made. Sigma is free to overlap the entire RF line up.
Canon doesn’t help out in any way. By the sounds of it, there is no IP being given to Sigma or Tamron to make their lenses work. Like the EF mount, it sounds like all of Canon’s tech has to be reverse engineered.
Sigma is a small company
I sometimes wonder if people think Sigma’s capabilities in R&D and manufacturing are close to the big camera makers. Canon is obviously an enormous company and easily spends more 4-5 times more on R&D across their business than Sigma’s entire yearly revenue.
So if you’re Sigma, why would you simply stick an RF mount on your existing line up of lenses and not utilize what’s available in the RF mount?
Secondly, does Sigma have the manufacturing capacity to meet the potential demand that would come from the RF mount. Canon sells way more cameras and lenses than anyone else does.
The “Approval” to make lenses
There are assumptions about what Canon’s approval process is. The general thought is that it’s licensing fees that have to be negotiated. I don’t think it is.
I think it has more to do with Canon protecting their IP and making sure that whatever a company like Sigma figures out, it can’t go outside of their four walls. Maybe no one outside of Sigma’s four walls can help with any of the engineering, or reverse engineering.
Licensing fees wouldn’t move the needle for Canon financially at all.
In Closing
I am just guessing as I mentioned. If some of you have other ideas, please sound off on the forum.
I’m sure a few people will think it, but there is no way a Canon executive is going to come out and lie about such a thing.
I wanted to fanboy a bit, because I have even received terse emails about this topic. Sometimes things aren’t what they seem and for whatever reason, neither Canon, Sigma or Tamron wanted to talk about it. In some ways, you can understand why.
Canon doesn’t care what the third-parties do as long as they ask nicely to use the mount. Canon wants you to buy Canon lenses, they’re not going to give you good news about other brands.
Sigma doesn’t want to address it because there are a lot of challenges they may not have found solutions for. Which is also understandable; I imagine such an endeavor is difficult.
I’m not saying we owe Canon an apology as a community for the internet hate thrown their way, but it isn’t up to them.
It’s time to start knocking on some other doors. If you do, do it nicely.