Canva restructuring to affect 1,271 jobs, 22% of workforce

What Canva announced

Perkins said the changes would mean "changes to their roles or being asked to relocate to centralised hubs" for some staff, and "saying goodbye to teammates and friends" for others.

Perkins said the changes reshape Canva's organisational structure, team locations and staffing requirements. Canva is merging its product, growth and platform teams into a single product organisation. It is also cutting management layers and reducing subspecialisation. That means employees may take on wider responsibilities.

"This is without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history," Perkins wrote. She said small changes would not be enough. Canva needed to refound itself around small, empowered teams, she said.

Canva has not said how many of the 1,271 will actually leave.

Why it matters for users

Canva's apps and its existing free and paid plans are unaffected. Nothing visible changes today.

What to watch is price and AI limits. Canva slowed the rollout of its biggest AI-led software update because running AI for 200 million-plus free users was eating into profits, Cliff Obrecht said in August.

The company says the cost of each AI task has fallen by nearly 90% since Canva AI 2.0 launched in April. Canva also owns the Affinity design apps, which it made free last year. It has announced no changes to them.

The numbers behind the cut

Growth slowed this year for the first time in a decade. Canva cut its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%, Xinhua reported. Sales grew 38% in 2025 and 45% the year before, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

AI costs are part of the story. Canva delayed the rollout of its biggest AI-led software update because the cost of running AI for more than 200 million free users was eating into profits, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Co-founder Cliff Obrecht said in August that a generous free AI product for 200-plus million users "comes with a huge cost and so we needed to get that cost down." Canva says the cost of each AI task has fallen by nearly 90% since its April AI release.

Valuations also fell. Canva cut its internal valuation to 43.9 billion Australian dollars, about $30.6 billion, Xinhua reported. In August, Blackbird cut its valuation of Canva by 17% to $34.9 billion from $42 billion, and Airtree followed suit, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Pay, relocation and the Vienna unit

Departing staff get at least six months of salary and 12 months of healthcare where Canva provides it. They can keep their laptops. Canva will offer US$10,000 grants to leavers who start their own ventures.

Sydney will become the primary home for more product teams. Canva would not say how many of the 1,271 roles sit in its Vienna unit, which employed about 80 people on average last year, Trending Topics reported. The company said Vienna remains a hub for Canva.

What happens next

Conversations with affected employees will be timed to meet local requirements. Leavers keep Slack and Gmail access until the end of the week. The office attendance rule, two to three days a week for most hybrid staff, starts in January. The deadline to register interest in the US$10,000 grants is 14 December.