Run and debug in Blender

Blender Development provides a Blender run configuration for lightweight launches and full debug sessions.

Prerequisites

PyCharm 2026.1 or newer
Blender 4.2 or newer
A project configured in Project Blender Manager

Configure a launch

Open Project Blender Manager.
Select the Blender executable or application bundle.
Confirm the source folder and add-on or extension name.
Set optional Blender arguments, log level, environment variables, and extra script directories.
Open Run > Edit Configurations and add a Blender configuration.

Project environment variables override application-level variables with the same name. Additional Blender arguments are appended to the generated launch command.

Run or debug

Run starts Blender and attempts to refresh and enable the configured add-on or extension.
Debug starts the bundled runtime, loads the configured add-on roots, starts debugpy, and asks PyCharm to attach automatically.

Enable Reload on Save in Project Blender Manager to reload the configured add-on after saving files during a Debug session.

Runtime commands

While a Debug runtime session is active, use these commands from the Tools menu or plugin tool window:

Run Script sends the selected Python file to Blender. It is also available from the Python editor context menu.
Reload Add-on reloads the configured add-on or extension.
Stop Blender ends the active Blender process.

The generated bootstrap script and runtime session state are removed when Blender exits. Stale scripts are cleaned on a later IDE startup.