Nano Banana 2 Is Here: What Changed and How to Prompt It for Actual Results

Google just shipped Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), and it's not a minor version bump. It's a fundamentally different trade-off: Pro-level capabilities at Flash speed. If you've been prompting Nano Banana or Nano Banana Pro over the last six months, some of your workflows just got faster-and some of your prompts need updating.

Here's what actually matters, what changed under the hood, and how to write prompts that take advantage of it.

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What Nano Banana 2 actually is (and isn't)

The naming is confusing, so let's clear it up. Google now has three image models in the Nano Banana family:

Nano Banana (the original, August 2025) - the one that went viral. Fast, fun, good for casual edits.

Nano Banana Pro (November 2025) - slower, smarter. Studio-quality output, better world knowledge, but noticeably heavier.

Nano Banana 2 (February 2026) - the merger. Pro-level intelligence and visual fidelity, running on Flash infrastructure. It replaces Pro as the default across Gemini app's Fast, Thinking, and Pro modes. [1]

The key shift: you no longer have to choose between "fast but dumb" and "smart but slow." Nano Banana 2 gives you the reasoning depth of Pro at speeds closer to the original. For anyone building production workflows-ad creative pipelines, content automation, product mockups-this collapses a decision that used to be painful.

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The 5 things that actually changed (and why they matter for prompting)

1. World knowledge got real-time grounding

This is the biggest deal for practical use. Nano Banana 2 doesn't just know what things look like from training data-it can pull from web search to ground its generations in real references. [1] [2]

What this means in practice: you can now prompt for specific real-world subjects-buildings, landmarks, products, public figures-and get results that are informed by actual visual references, not the model's hazy memory of training data.

Before (Nano Banana / generic image models):

A photo of the Château de Chambord in the style of Synthetic Cubism

The model would produce something that vaguely resembled a French château. Maybe.

Now (Nano Banana 2):

Create an image of Museum Clos Lucé. In the style of bright colored
Synthetic Cubism. No text. Your plan is to first search for visual
references, and generate after. Aspect ratio 16:9

That phrase - "your plan is to first search for visual references, and generate after" - is the new prompting primitive. You're telling the model to use its grounding capability before rendering. This is a pattern worth adopting for anything location-specific, product-specific, or culturally specific. [1]

2. Text rendering actually works now

Previous image models treated text as decoration. You'd ask for a sign that says "Open 24 Hours" and get "Opeh 2H Huors." Nano Banana 2 renders text that's legible and accurate-including across languages. [1] [2]

This unlocks a category of prompts that were previously useless: marketing mockups, infographics, greeting cards, localized signage.

A prompt pattern that leverages this:

An intimate, naturalistic cinematic close-up reveals a small,
intricately illustrated sign made of recycled material, showing
drawings of local birds and flowers. Delicate script below reads:
"Native Wildlife: Please Observe from a Distance."

And then a follow-up:

Take this concept and localize it to an Indian setting,
including translation of all the text to Hindi

The model handles both the visual localization and the text translation in a single pass. For anyone doing multi-market creative work, this cuts what used to be a Figma + translator + render pipeline into one prompt. [1]

3. Subject consistency across multiple generations

This was Nano Banana Pro's party trick, and it's now in Flash. You can maintain character resemblance for up to 5 characters and object fidelity for up to 14 objects across a workflow. [1]

The prompt pattern here is explicit consistency instructions:

Create a funny 6 part story with these 3 fluffy friends building
a tree house. The story is thrilling throughout with emotional
highs and lows and is ending in a happy moment. Keep the attire
and identity consistent of all 3 characters, but their expressions
and angles should vary throughout all 6 images. Make sure to only
have one of each character in each image. Generate 6 images one at
a time. Each image should be a separate output in 16:9 format.

Notice how specific this is. "Keep the attire and identity consistent" isn't enough. You need to specify what should change (expressions, angles) and what shouldn't (attire, identity). The more explicit the contract, the better the consistency. [1]

4. Production-ready specs: 512px to 4K, new aspect ratios

Nano Banana 2 supports resolutions from 512px (new, optimized for speed) up to 4K, plus new extreme aspect ratios like 4:1, 1:4, 8:1, and 1:8. [2]

The 512px tier is interesting for pipelines where you're generating dozens or hundreds of variants and only need high-res for finals. Think of it as a "draft mode" for image generation-rapid iteration at low cost, then upscale your winners.

For social media workflows specifically, the native aspect ratio support means you can generate platform-specific assets in one pass instead of generating square and then cropping:

[your creative prompt here]
Aspect ratio 9:16

[same prompt]
Aspect ratio 1:1

[same prompt]
Aspect ratio 16:9

5. Configurable thinking levels

This is a developer-facing feature that changes how you approach complex prompts. You can now set the model's reasoning depth: Minimal (default) for fast generation, or High/Dynamic for prompts that need the model to think before rendering. [2]

This matters because some prompts are simple ("a red car on a beach") and some are compositionally complex ("a flat-lay infographic explaining the water cycle with hand-drawn arrows, educational tone, bird's-eye view, soft lighting"). The second prompt benefits from the model planning before generating. Setting thinking to High for complex compositions and Minimal for simple generations is the new best practice.

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Prompt patterns that work with Nano Banana 2

Based on the official examples and the model's new capabilities, here are patterns worth adopting:

The grounded generation pattern

Create an image of [specific real-world subject].
In the style of [artistic style].
No text.
Your plan is to first search for visual references,
and generate after.
Aspect ratio [ratio].

Use this whenever you're generating something that exists in the real world. The "search first, generate after" instruction activates the model's web grounding.

The localization pattern

[Detailed scene description with specific text in English]

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Take this concept and localize it to [target market/language],
including translation of all the text to [language]

Two-step: first establish the scene, then localize. This gives the model a clear reference point before it has to adapt.

The multi-image consistency pattern

Create [N] images of [characters/objects] in [scenario].
Keep [specific attributes] consistent across all images.
Vary [specific attributes] between images.
Generate each image separately in [aspect ratio] format.

The key is being explicit about what stays fixed and what varies. Don't leave it to the model to guess.

The infographic pattern

High-quality flat lay photography creating a DIY infographic
that explains [topic], arranged on [background].
The visual story flows [direction] in clear steps.
[Arrow/connector style] guide the viewer's eye.
The overall mood is [mood descriptors].
Shot from [camera angle] with [lighting description].

Nano Banana 2's text rendering and world knowledge make infographic generation actually viable now. The key is treating the prompt like a brief: specify layout, flow direction, visual connectors, mood, and camera angle.

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Where to use it

Nano Banana 2 is available now across:

• Gemini app - it's the new default across Fast, Thinking, and Pro modes. Pro/Ultra subscribers still get Nano Banana Pro access via the regenerate menu. [1]
• AI Studio + API - available in preview as gemini-3.1-flash-image-preview. Requires a paid API key. [1] [2]
• Vertex AI - for enterprise deployment. [2]
• Flow - as the new default image model, zero credits. [1]
• Google Search - in AI Mode and Lens, now in 141 new countries. [1]

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Closing thought

The real story of Nano Banana 2 isn't "better images." It's the collapse of the speed-quality trade-off. For the first time, the fast model is also the smart model. That changes how you structure prompts (you can be more ambitious), how you build pipelines (you can iterate faster at lower cost), and what's feasible as a solo creator or small team.

The prompts that win now aren't the ones that describe a scene in 500 words. They're the ones that give the model the right constraints: ground it in reality, tell it what to keep consistent, specify the output format, and let its reasoning do the rest.

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References

1. Nano Banana 2: Combining Pro capabilities with lightning-fast speed - Google Blog - https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/ai/nano-banana-2/
2. Build with Nano Banana 2, our best image generation and editing model - Google Blog - https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/developers-tools/build-with-nano-banana-2/
3. Gemini API Image Generation Documentation - Google AI for Developers - https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/image-generation
4. Nano Banana 2 Pricing - Google AI for Developers - https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing#gemini-3.1-flash-image-preview