Localize your site

Localization in Webflow lets you create versions of your site for different languages and regions, giving you the ability to tailor content, design, and even CMS data for specific audiences. In this video, we'll give you an overview of what localization is and how it works in Webflow.

At its core, localization means adapting your site for a specific locale — a combination of language and region. A locale might be French for France, or Spanish for Mexico, or English for Australia. Each locale can have its own translated content, localized images, and even different CMS items.

In Webflow, you start with a primary locale — typically your default language — and then add secondary locales from there. Once you've set up your locales, you can switch between them in the Designer and translate content for each one. Webflow even includes built-in machine translation to help speed up the process.

One of the key things to understand about how Webflow handles localization is that your design structure is shared across all locales, but the content can be different for each one. So if you update a style or layout in your primary locale, that change cascades to secondary locales. But content changes — text, images, CMS data — stay in the locale where you made them.

Webflow Localization also supports localized CMS content, so you can translate collection items, manage which items appear in which locales, and even create locale-specific CMS items that only exist in one locale.

For visitors, you can add a locale switcher to your site so they can choose their preferred language. And Webflow handles the URL structure for localized pages automatically.

That's a high-level overview of localization in Webflow. The lessons in this course go deeper into each part of the setup and workflow.