Canva Mandates Office Return and Restructures 22% of Workforce Amid Slowing Growth

Canva has announced a sweeping corporate restructuring that will impact 1,271 employees, representing 22% of its global workforce. The Australian design software company is merging divisions, cutting management layers, and mandating a partial return to the office.[2]

Chief Executive Officer Melanie Perkins detailed the overhaul in a memo to staff on Wednesday, November 4, describing it as the most difficult moment in the company's 13-year history. She noted that the structural changes are necessary to prepare the organization for its next decade of operations.[1][3]

"After exploring a wide range of alternatives, I've come to the difficult conclusion that small changes won't be enough," Perkins wrote in the memo. "To set ourselves up for the next decade, we need to refound Canva, getting back to our roots of small, empowered teams."[1]

The restructuring will involve a mix of direct layoffs, role changes, and requests for employees to relocate to centralized hubs. Canva has not specified the exact number of outright redundancies versus relocations within the affected group of 1,271 workers.[3]

Employees were informed of the changes early Wednesday morning, with affected staff receiving calendar invitations for individual consultations. Canva gave all employees the day off on November 4 to process the news and support departing colleagues before normal operations resume.[2]

Consolidating the Product Organization

A central pillar of the overhaul involves merging Canva's product, growth, and platform teams into a single, unified product organization. The company aims to reduce subspecialization and eliminate overlapping responsibilities that have accumulated during its rapid expansion.[1][2]

Management layers will be collapsed to give individual contributors broader ownership over their projects. Perkins cited fragmented ownership and excessive handovers as operational hurdles that the new structure is designed to eliminate, allowing teams to focus on building.[1][4]

The reorganization will eliminate narrower specializations in favor of broader, cross-functional roles. By consolidating overlapping responsibilities, Canva hopes to accelerate decision-making and reduce the number of handovers required to ship new features to its global user base.[1][2]

Sydney will become the primary operational hub for a larger share of Canva's product teams. Employees in certain specialized roles are being asked to relocate to the Australian city to facilitate closer in-person collaboration and shared context.[3]

The decision to centralize product teams in Sydney reverses a highly publicized geographic expansion strategy. Over the past five years, Canva had aggressively recruited talent across 37 different countries, building a distributed workforce that operated across multiple time zones.[3]

"Working across countries has brought enormous benefits and talent, but it's also made it harder to bring the right people together to solve complex problems," Perkins explained. The new structure prioritizes physical proximity for teams tackling the company's most critical engineering challenges.[1][3]

The shift marks a departure from the remote-first working arrangements Canva championed during the pandemic. The company previously allowed employees to work from their closest hub just twice a quarter, a policy that was later scrapped entirely.[3]

Under the new mandate, most hybrid employees will be expected to work from the office two to three days a week starting in January 2027. The specific requirements will vary depending on local regulations and the employee's designated region.[2]

Navigating Slower Revenue Growth

The reorganization arrives as Canva confronts its first significant deceleration in growth after a decade of rapid expansion. In August 2026, the company lowered its full-year revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%, following a 38% expansion in the previous financial year.[2]

"This has been our hardest year yet, and as we shared earlier this year, our growth has slowed for the first time in a decade," Perkins informed employees. She emphasized that the company needs to spend more time building and less time navigating internal bureaucracy.[1][2]

Canva entered 2026 valued at $40 billion and was widely considered one of the world's hottest initial public offering prospects. Financial analysts had anticipated that a Canva IPO would be the largest debut by an Australian technology company in history.[3]

The landscape shifted as generative AI fundamentally altered how consumers and businesses approach digital design. Competitors like Figma, whose shares more than halved in early 2026, have faced similar pressures as investors question the long-term durability of traditional design software moats.

The broader software industry is currently facing intense pressure from advances in artificial intelligence. Investors have grown concerned that AI tools could undercut established software-as-a-service business models, prompting companies to aggressively embed AI features into their own platforms.

Canva has invested heavily in its AI capabilities, rolling out its Magic Studio suite to maintain its competitive edge against rivals like Adobe and emerging generative AI startups. However, serving AI tools to a largely non-paying user base has introduced substantial new infrastructure costs.[3]

Following the revised growth forecasts, Canva's internal valuation was reportedly marked down from $38.9 billion to $31 billion in August 2026. Major venture backers Blackbird and Airtree similarly reduced their valuations of the company by 17% to $34.9 billion.

Severance and Transition Support

Employees departing Canva will receive a minimum of six months' salary, inclusive of statutory entitlements, regardless of their location. The company is also waiving the standard one-year vesting cliff for equity granted to recent hires affected by the cuts.[1]

AI

In countries where Canva provides healthcare benefits, departing staff will retain their coverage for an additional 12 months. The company is also allowing affected employees to keep their work laptops and providing access to career coaching services and LinkedIn Premium.

To support those looking to start their own businesses, Canva is launching the Canva Collective Fund. The initiative will offer $10,000 grants to departing employees who want to establish a new venture or pursue a community project.[2]

"Whether it's starting a business or doing something meaningful for their local community, the fund is designed to help get those ideas off the ground," Perkins wrote. She added that Canva will not take any equity in the funded projects, with applications closing December 14.[1][2]

Broader Technology Sector Shifts

Canva's restructuring reflects a wider trend of consolidation across the global technology sector. Established software companies are increasingly streamlining their operations to focus on core products and manage the capital-intensive transition to AI-driven architectures.[3]

The Australian technology landscape has seen several major workforce reductions in recent months. Enterprise software developer Atlassian previously announced 1,600 redundancies, while logistics software firm WiseTech Global and Afterpay owner Block have also executed significant job cuts.

Despite the slowdown, Canva remains one of the world's most valuable private software companies, boasting over 208 million monthly active users as of July 2026. The platform continues to generate substantial revenue, but the pace of user acquisition has stabilized compared to its pandemic-era surge.[3]

The company has scheduled a global all-hands meeting for November 10 to discuss the restructuring details further. Until then, the immediate focus remains on managing the transition for the 1,271 employees navigating role changes, relocations, or departures.[2]