Canva CEO says a major reorganization will affect 22% of its workforce. Read the memo.

Canva is laying off or changing responsibilities for nearly 1,300 employees. Alisha Jucevic/Bloomberg via Getty Images Canva says 1,271 employees — 22% of its workforce — will be affected by a major reorganization. In a 1,600-word memo, Canva's CEO wrote that it's simplifying ranks and moving more roles to Sydney. Employees who lose their jobs will get at least six months' pay. The company hasn't said how many will be cut. Canva has announced a major restructuring. On Tuesday, the design software company's CEO, Melanie Perkins, published a memo sent to employees titled "An important update on our team." In it, she said that 1,271 employees, roughly 22% of the workforce, will be affected by a reorganization. Some employees will see their roles change or relocate, she said, while others will lose their jobs. It comes after Canva lowered its growth expectations. In August, the company changed its 2026 revenue growth forecast from 30% to 20%. In Tuesday's memo, Perkins said that this year has been the company's "hardest year yet" and that "growth has slowed for the first time in a decade." Canva has also faced fresh competition from AI tools, including OpenAI's and Google's image-generating models. Read the memo: Hi everyone, Today, I have some profoundly difficult news to share. After months of thinking through how to set Canva up for the next chapter, we have made the incredibly hard decision to make significant changes to how we're organised, where some of our teams are based, and the roles and skills we need for the future. This means 1,271 people, or 22% of Canva, will be impacted. For some people, this will mean changes to their roles or being asked to relocate to centralised hubs. Sadly, it will also mean saying goodbye to teammates and friends who have helped build Canva into what it is today. This is without doubt the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history. Behind every decision is someone we care deeply about, and I know the consequences will be very real for those directly affected, their families, friends and teammates. I'm deeply sorry for the pain and disruption this will cause for everyone affected. While nothing can make this news easier, we will do everything we possibly can to support everyone affected. I want to explain as openly as I can why we're making these changes, how we reached these decisions, and, most importantly, how we will care for the people affected today. Why we're making these changes We've spoken a lot about how quickly the world is changing. New technology is transforming what people can create, how they create it, and what they expect from the products they use. Over the past thirteen years, we've turned a dream in a pitch deck into a platform used by hundreds of millions of people. None of it would have been possible without the talent, imagination and care of every single person who has been part of this journey. Yet success in our first chapter doesn't guarantee success in the next. 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. After exploring a wide range of alternatives, I've come to the difficult conclusion that small changes won't be enough. To set ourselves up for the next decade, we need to refound Canva, getting back to our roots of small, empowered teams with the freedom to make decisions, take ownership and focus on what matters most for our community. It also means making some of the hardest decisions we've ever faced, including saying goodbye to people who have helped make Canva what it is today. For that, I am deeply sorry. What we're changing We're making three changes to bring more of what has made Canva special back into how we work. #1. We're simplifying how we come together to build Canva As we've grown, more of our work has become organised around team structures and narrow areas of ownership. Improving one part of our product often requires navigating between Product, Growth and Platform, with more handovers and coordination than necessary. This has made it harder to take ownership of bigger problems and to build a deeply unified product for our community. We've tried many ways to solve this over the years, but it's become clear we need to revisit our underlying structure. To do that, we're bringing Product, Growth and Platform together into one Product Org and changing the way we work to provide clearer ownership, greater autonomy and flexibility to tackle our most important goals. We want to get back to spending more time building, and less time navigating how work gets done. #2. We're reducing subspecialisation and collapsing layers to broaden ownership Over time, we've divided work across more and more subspecialties and teams. While this has helped us build valuable expertise, it's also fragmented ownership and made it harder to see the full picture, with different teams responsible for many pieces of the same work. We're reducing this fragmentation and incorp