Canva’s 22% Shake-Up: Why CEO Melanie Perkins is Rebuilding the Company?

Canva’s biggest redesign is happening inside the company.

The Australian platform helps people make presentations, posters, invitations and social media posts using ready-made templates and increasingly powerful artificial intelligence tools.

Now co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins says the organisation behind those tools has become too complicated. On November 4, 2026, she announced a restructuring affecting 22% of its workforce, calling this the hardest moment in Canva’s 13-year history.

The announcement combines three developments: slower growth, a major overhaul of how teams work and a stronger concentration of product work in Sydney. Understanding those distinctions matters, particularly when counting how many people are actually losing their jobs.

Why is Canva shaking up more than one in five employees?

Perkins says Canva’s growth has slowed for the first time in a decade, and smaller organisational changes will no longer be enough.

Her diagnosis is that the company has accumulated too many narrow responsibilities, overlapping teams and handovers. Improving a product can require navigating several departments, making it harder for anyone to take responsibility for the whole task.

Canva is, therefore, changing its structure, the scope of individual jobs and where some teams work. Perkins describes the ambition as “refound Canva”: recover the speed and accountability of smaller teams while operating a much larger business.

Slower growth does not, by itself, mean revenue is falling or the company is losing money. It means the business is expanding less quickly. That can still create pressure if staffing and spending were organised around faster expansion.

Are all 1,271 affected employees being laid off?

No. Canva’s letter identifies three possible outcomes: changes to existing roles, requests to relocate and departures from the company.

The figure of 1,271 covers all three. The announcement does not give a separate redundancy count.

That makes “Canva is laying off 22% of its staff” an imprecise description of what the company has disclosed. Job losses are part of the restructuring, but the full affected group also includes people whose employment may continue under different arrangements.

What will actually change inside Canva?

Three functions called Product, Growth and Platform will come together in one product organisation.

Broadly, these cover what users can do, how the service attracts and retains users, and the underlying systems supporting it. Perkins says separating responsibilities across these areas has created unnecessary coordination.

Canva also plans to combine narrower specialties into broader roles, consolidate overlapping responsibilities and reduce organisational layers.

The intended result is that a team can take a problem from beginning to end with fewer handovers. Whether that delivers faster improvements remains to be demonstrated. These are management’s proposed solutions, rather than evidence that departing employees performed poorly. Perkins explicitly says the decisions do not diminish their contributions.

Is artificial intelligence behind the job losses?

Canva’s restructuring letter does not explicitly mention AI or say that particular jobs are being replaced by it.

However, AI is an important part of the company’s wider business challenge.

In a separate account of its research work, Canva explains that generating useful designs requires a combination of models, tools and contextual information. Running those systems costs money. At its scale, the company says, even a few cents’ difference per AI generation becomes significant.

Canva is developing its own models alongside those supplied by partners, seeking both better results and lower computing costs.

Its argument for remaining useful is that people need designs they can edit: change the wording, move objects and preserve a brand’s appearance. Producing an attractive image is only part of that job.

The business question is whether Canva can provide those capabilities at a cost supported by customer spending. The available announcements do not establish that AI caused the redundancies. canva.com

Why is more work moving to Sydney?

Perkins says closely connected teams need more shared context and face-to-face collaboration.

Sydney will become the primary base for more product teams and some other specialties. Some employees will therefore be asked to consider relocation, with support promised.

This is a significant change for a company operating across 37 countries. However, Canva also says it will continue investing in international teams, particularly where proximity to customers and local markets matters.

From January 2027, most hybrid employees will be expected in the office around two or three days a week, with arrangements depending on their area.

What support will departing employees receive?

Canva says everyone leaving through the changes will receive at least six months’ salary, including any legally required entitlements. That means the statutory payment forms part of the six-month minimum.

The company is also removing the one-year equity vesting cliff for recent joiners. A vesting cliff is the initial waiting period before an employee becomes entitled to the first portion of their shares.

Other support includes career coaching, interview preparation and an optional alumni directory to connect departing employees with prospective employers. Healthcare will continue for 12 months in countries where Canva already provides it, alongside 12 months of employee assistance support extending to family members. Departing employees can keep their work MacBooks.

Is Canva really offering people money to start businesses?

Yes. Its new Canva Collective Fund will provide $10,000 grants for departing employees who want to start a business or pursue a community project.

Canva says it will take no ownership stake in what they create. Employees leaving through the restructuring have until December 14 to register their interest.

However, the announcement does not set out detailed selection rules or the fund’s total budget. It should therefore be described as a grant opportunity, rather than an automatic additional payment to everyone leaving.

How does Canva’s reset connect to India?

India is an important market for the platform’s creators, students, educators and small businesses.

In an October 2025 interview, Canva India head Chandrika Deb described India as its fourth-largest market by users and among its fastest-growing. She highlighted local-language and culturally relevant content, alongside short-duration subscription options. Those rankings describe the position at the time of that interview.

For Indian users, the practical question is whether Canva’s restructuring produces useful improvements while keeping the service affordable. For employees, the immediate questions concern individual roles and relocation requirements.

The announcement provides no India-specific breakdown of affected employees and announces no corresponding change to Indian subscription prices.

What happens next?

Canva plans a company-wide meeting on November 10, followed by organisational meetings from November 11. Individual discussions and employment procedures will vary because employees work under different countries’ requirements.

The immediate unanswered question is how many people will ultimately leave, compared with those changing roles or relocating.

The longer test is whether the new structure delivers faster product improvements and renewed growth. Perkins has explained why she believes Canva needs rebuilding. The results will show whether the rebuild works.