Canva is cutting, relocating, or reshaping 1,271 roles—22% of its global workforce—as the design platform confronts its first major growth slowdown in a decade. Co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins described 2026 as the company’s most difficult year yet, making this the biggest workforce reset in Canva’s 13-year history. The 1,271-person restructuring is not limited to redundancies: some employees will move into new positions, while others may be asked to relocate.
In a note posted to Canva’s newsroom, Perkins said the changes followed months of planning around the company’s next phase. The overhaul will combine Product, Growth, and Platform into a single Product organization, with the goal of giving teams clearer ownership and more autonomy. Sydney will also become the primary base for more product staff and other specialist roles. Canva says affected employees will receive at least six months’ pay, healthcare and mental-health support, career coaching, and help with their job searches.
The retrenchment comes after Canva lowered its 2026 revenue-growth forecast from 30% to 20%. The company has also been wrestling with the economics of rolling out generative-AI features, whose computing costs can rise quickly when products are offered to a large free-user base. Coverage of the investor update said Canva slowed some AI launches while working to improve unit economics and rebuild parts of its technology architecture.
That pressure is particularly notable because Canva recently looked like one of the strongest private technology companies in the world. An employee share sale in August 2025 valued the Australian company at $42 billion, with Fidelity Management & Research leading the round and J.P. Morgan Asset Management joining as an investor. The company’s challenge now is to defend that scale while competing with increasingly capable AI image, presentation, and document tools that can produce usable results at little or no cost.
For Canva users, the immediate question is whether the restructure will speed up product development or make support and feature work less predictable. Canva has not announced a shutdown of its consumer or enterprise services, and the company’s stated plan is to consolidate teams rather than retreat from product expansion. Employees are scheduled to meet at a company-wide all-hands on November 10, when leadership plans to explain the new structure and next steps.
