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Canva job cuts leave future of its Johannesburg team unclear

Canva is cutting or changing 1,271 roles, 22% of its staff. A year after it opened a nine-person office in Johannesburg, it has not said whether its African team is affected.

· 2 min read
An aerial view of Rosebank, Johannesburg, where Canva's South African team is based.
Photo by Jolame Chirwa on Unsplash

Canva, the Australian design platform, is cutting or changing 1,271 roles, 22% of its workforce. It has not said whether the nine-person team it set up in Johannesburg in November 2025 is affected, and reports on the restructure do not mention Africa.

In a note to staff, co-founder and chief executive Melanie Perkins wrote that "this has been our hardest year yet" and that "our growth has slowed for the first time in a decade", TechCrunch reported. Canva is merging its product, growth and platform teams into one product organisation, with Sydney as the main home for product teams, and some staff will be asked to move. It has not said how many of the 1,271 people will leave and how many will change roles or relocate. A Canva spokesperson told Fortune the roles are not being replaced by AI.

Canva cut its expected revenue growth from 30% to 20% in August. Condia reports second-quarter revenue of $921.9 million, up 25.2% but below Canva's own guidance, and says investors Blackbird and Airtree marked the company's valuation down from $42 billion to $34.9 billion. Perkins said running the most advanced AI models had proved too expensive to offer widely, and Canva says the cost of each AI task has fallen by nearly 90% since Canva AI 2.0 launched in April.

People who leave get at least six months' salary, including statutory entitlements, wherever they are based, and 12 months of healthcare where Canva already provides it. The one-year vesting cliff is removed for those who joined in the past year, they keep their laptops, and they can apply until 14 December for a $10,000 grant from the Canva Collective Fund, which takes no equity in what they build.

Canva's Johannesburg office, at AfricaWorks in Rosebank, was described at its opening as the company's most significant physical investment in the region. Canva also added local-currency pricing in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya and support for nearly 20 African languages, including isiZulu, isiXhosa, Afrikaans and Swahili, and said South Africans had created more than 77 million designs on it in 2025. It has not published how many people it employs in Africa.

Newzroom dot Africa has reached out to Canva for comment and is awaiting a response. This story will be updated when they respond.

Source: TechCrunch

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