Abhaya Libre
Type with Purpose
Good typography guides attention, improves understanding, and makes communication effortless.
The Anatomy of a Typeface
By FontSide · June 2026
Every typeface is a system of decisions — about stroke contrast, x-height, spacing, and rhythm. The best ones feel invisible: you stop seeing the letters and start hearing the voice behind them. That transparency is the hardest thing to design.
A high x-height opens up the counters and makes small text breathe. Tight tracking pulls a headline together; loose tracking gives a caption room to exhale. None of these choices are accidents — they are arguments about how reading should feel.
Uppercase
Lowercase
Numerals
Symbols
Configuration
Select the weights and styles you want to include in your project.
Weights
Package Manager
The recommended way to use fonts in modern web projects.
1. Install Package
pnpm add @fontsource/abhaya-libre2. Import in App
// Please select at least one weight and style3. CSS Usage
body {
font-family: "Abhaya Libre", serif;
}Google Fonts CDN
Use Google's CDN to embed the fonts directly via HTML.
HTML <head>
<!-- Please select at least one weight and style -->Fontsource CDN
Skip the build step by adding this directly to your global CSS file.
Global CSS
/* Please select at least one weight and style */Background & Story
Abhaya Libre is the unicode compliant, complete libre version of the most widely used Sinhala typeface ‘FM Abhaya’ and includes Sinhala and Latin support. Designed in 1996, ‘FM Abhaya’ is an interpretation of the Sinhala letterpress typefaces from 1960s. The name ‘Abhaya’ is derived from the King Abhaya (474 BCE to 454 BCE) who reigned Sri Lanka from the ancient kingdom of Upatissa Nuwara.
‘Abhaya Libre’ was completely redrawn from scratch based on FM Abhaya to comply with modern day usages in terms of web, tab and smaller sizes for smartphones. Available in 5 weights, Abhaya Libre enables designers to build sophisticated typographic layouts by using lighter weights for body text and heavier weights for headlines and subheadings. Each of these weights contains 925 glyphs that enables clean and precise rendering for Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit texts. Compact ‘Da’ forms can be enabled by using stylistic sets. The Latin characters, that match the aesthetics of ‘Abhaya Libre Sinhala’, which was inspired by the style of the original Sinhala with an eminent contrast between distinctive strokes that go from thick to thin and was further modified to co-exist with the visual logics of Latin typefaces. The ductus references according to the lines of a Didone typeface add a touch of Sinhala form to certain terminations. Large counters have been added along with small ascenders and descenders for optimized screen viewing.
The project is led by Mooniak, a small type foundry based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in collaboration with Pushpananda Ekanayake. The Latin part is designed by Sol Matas. Initial development and release was funded by Google Fonts in 2015. For more information and updates, or to report any bugs or suggestions, see github.com/mooniak/abhaya-libre-font
Tags & Moods
Subsets
Install
pnpm add @fontsource/abhaya-libreDesigned by
Mooniak
Links
License
OFL-1.1