Canva Restructures 22% of Its Workforce, Affecting 1,271 People
The design platform says some staff will leave, others will change roles or move to central hubs, as growth slows for the first time in a decade.
Canva announced this week that a restructuring will affect 1,271 people, or 22 percent of its workforce. Some will lose their jobs. Others will be asked to change roles or move to central hubs. The company has not said how many of the 1,271 fall into each group.
Co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins told staff the move was "without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history." She said 2026 has been the company's hardest year yet, and that growth has slowed for the first time in a decade. "Small changes won't be enough," she wrote.
Canva was founded in Sydney in 2013. It built a design tool that let people without design training make posters, presentations and social media graphics. That simplicity made it one of Australia's best-known startups, with teams now in 37 countries.
What changes
The restructure has three parts. Canva will bring its Product, Growth and Platform teams together into a single product organisation, cutting the handovers between them. It will reduce management layers and replace some narrow specialist roles with broader ones. And it will put more closely connected teams in the same place.
Sydney will become the primary home for more of its product teams. From January, most hybrid staff will be expected in the office two to three days a week, depending on their team.
The timing will vary by country. Canva said individual conversations will be staggered to meet local requirements, with a company-wide meeting scheduled for November 10 and team sessions from November 11.
What departing staff get
Staff who leave will receive at least six months' salary. They will keep their healthcare coverage for a further 12 months in countries where that benefit applies, and they will keep the laptops they were issued.
Canva also set up a fund, the Canva Collective Fund, offering grants of $10,000 to departing staff who want to start a business or run a community project. The company said it will take no ownership stake in what they build.
The AI question
Perkins did not blame artificial intelligence for the cuts. Her note pointed instead to "new technology" changing what customers expect. ABC News reported that it understood Canva was restructuring to build AI products, rather than using AI to replace the people leaving.
That distinction matters because the cost of AI is part of the story. Business Insider reported in August that Canva cut its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30 percent to 20 percent after the cost of serving AI features on frontier models ran well above budget.
Canva is not alone in cutting back. The Guardian noted the move mirrors a wider round of technology layoffs, including 1,600 redundancies at Atlassian, another Australian software company.
For now, the one number Canva has not given is the one that matters most to the people affected: how many of the 1,271 will actually leave, and how many will simply move or change jobs inside the company.
