Canva restructuring affects 1,271 employees, 22% of its workforce

The Australian design company said the changes include redundancies, role changes and relocation requests, and did not say how many jobs will go. It blamed its first growth slowdown in a decade and a structure that had grown fragmented.

Canva said this week that a restructuring will affect 1,271 employees, or 22% of its workforce of about 5,700 people across 37 countries. The company did not disclose how many of the 1,271 will lose their jobs, how many will move into changed roles, and how many have been asked to relocate.

In a note to employees published on the company's website, chief executive Melanie Perkins called it “the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history” and said the company needed to “refound Canva, getting back to our roots of small, empowered teams.”

Perkins said the company had gone through its first slowdown in growth in a decade. In August, Canva cut its 2026 revenue-growth forecast to 20% from 30%, saying the cost of delivering AI features had proved higher than expected. Perkins also said the organisation had become fragmented as it expanded, with too many narrow specialisations and management layers.

The restructuring has three parts, according to the note. Canva will combine its Product, Growth and Platform teams into a single Product organisation, reduce narrow specialisations and remove management layers, and make Sydney the primary base for more of its product teams. From January, most hybrid employees will be expected to work from an office two to three days a week, depending on location.

Employees who leave will receive at least six months' salary, including statutory entitlements, regardless of location, and 12 months of healthcare coverage where the company provides it, the note said. They will also keep their MacBook, receive a year of LinkedIn Premium and career coaching, and be able to apply for grants of US$10,000 from a Canva Collective Fund for those starting a venture, with registration open until December 14 and no equity taken. Staff who joined less than a year ago will no longer face the one-year vesting cliff, and the company will provide 12 months of its Canva Care employee assistance programme, including for family members, plus an opt-in alumni directory.

Because the restructuring spans 37 countries, timing and process vary by local requirements. The company said affected employees would be told via Slack and Gmail through the end of the week, with an all-hands meeting on November 10 and organisation-level meetings from November 11. A union representing tech workers said members were shocked, with the announcement coming close to Christmas, the Australian Associated Press reported.

The note did not blame artificial intelligence for the changes. It pointed to slowing growth and organisational structure, and the company has told AAP that human tasks will not be delegated to AI. Canva cut 10 of its 12 technical-writer roles in March 2025, the Australian Financial Review reported, and the company has denied reports that its Leonardo.AI acquisition was being restructured.

Canva is headquartered in Sydney, Australia. It has more than 300 US-based employees out of a global workforce of more than 5,000, most of them around its Austin campus and its San Francisco hub, with others working remotely, according to the company's careers page. The company has not disclosed any breakdown of the 1,271 by country, and no WARN filing for Canva has surfaced in US records. A check of this site's WARN data found no filings under the Canva name.

Founded in 2013 by Perkins, Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, Canva says more than 250 million people use its platform each month. Its valuation reached US$40 billion in 2021 before falling to about US$26 billion in the 2022 technology selloff, and it has been preparing for a potential listing, Bloomberg reported. It launched Canva AI 2.0 this year, which lets users create and revise layered, editable designs by talking to an AI assistant.

What is still unknown: how many of the 1,271 are outright job losses, which countries and teams are hit hardest, and whether any US site reaches the threshold that would require a WARN notice.