Canva Cuts 1,271 Employees: What This Means for Indonesian Users and Developers

Canva announced a restructuring affecting 1,271 employees, around 22% of its global workforce, on November 4, 2026. This is important for Indonesia because our country is Canva's third largest market in the world and largest in Asia. Services are still running, but it's a good time to spruce up your design workflow.

This news immediately became popular in Indonesian technology media since Wednesday afternoon. Below we summarize what actually happened, the hard and fast numbers, and practical steps for regular users, MSMEs and developers integrating Canva into their apps.

What did Canva actually announce?

Canva co-founder and CEO, Melanie Perkins, sent an internal memo to employees. What it said: Canva's growth slowed for the first time in a decade, and small changes weren't enough. He called this step an effort to "refound Canva", namely rebuilding the way the company works for the next decade.

The main changes:

• 1,271 employees were affected, around 22% of the total staff.
• Product, Growth, and Platform teams were merged into one product organization to cut layers of management and overlapping responsibilities.
• Sydney is becoming the “home base” for more product teams and some specialist roles.
• Starting January 2027, hybrid employees will generally be required to come into the office 2–3 days per week.

Perkins called this moment "the hardest moment in our thirteen-year history", the most difficult moment in Canva's 13-year history.

Layoff or relocation? This is the difference between media reports

There are important differences between sources. TechCrunch wrote Canva laid off more than 1,200 people. CNN Indonesia (quoting The Verge) uses the phrase "trim or move". IBTimes UK confirmed Canva has not separated out how many were actually laid off, how many changed roles, and how many were asked to move to a centralized hub. So the number 1,271 is most accurately read as affected employees, not all layoffs.

Why does Canva do this?

The official reasons for the memo were slowing growth and an overly layered organization: too many handovers, fragmented responsibilities, and excessive management.

Beyond the memo, TechCrunch adds sharper context:

• AI costs are ballooning. Canva built its own AI models to reduce reliance on third-party models, but high AI costs led the company to cut its revenue growth projections from 30% to 20%.
• New competition. AI startups like Gamma and mainstream chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini can now create posters and presentations directly from text commands.
• Valuations fall. Early investors are said to have cut Canva's valuation to around US$35 billion earlier this year.

It's worth noting, IBTimes UK reports Canva did not name AI as the cause of the layoffs; AI is said to be the background to changes in people's expectations of creative software. A similar wave occurred in the same industry: the day before, Squarespace announced layoffs of 19% of its staff.

What do affected employees get?

The package announced was quite complete and went viral because of the detail "you can take your MacBook home":

Is Canva in Indonesia affected?

As of the writing of this article, no source has stated the number of Canva employees in Indonesia who have been affected, and Canva has not announced any changes to services, prices or features for Indonesian users. What is clear is that Indonesia is an important market: according to Kontan (February 2026), users in Indonesia will create more than one billion designs throughout 2025, and Canva has more than 360 creators and 180 ambassadors in 34 provinces.

This means that for now the direct impact on users is small. But major restructuring is usually followed by adjustments to product priorities. When Product, Growth, and Platform teams are merged, features deemed less strategic may slow down, and package policies may change. It's better to be prepared now than to panic later.

Practical steps for users and MSMEs

No need to leave Canva. Simply reduce the risk of dependency on a single tool:

1. Export essential designs. Logos, catalog templates, menus and promotional materials that are used repeatedly should have PDF/PNG copies in Google Drive or other storage.
2. Store brand assets outside of Canva. The color codes, high-resolution logo files, and fonts used in the Brand Kit need to have their own "source of truth."
3. Note the subscription renewal date. If there is a price or package change later, you have time to consider before being automatically charged.
4. Prepare backup tools. For routine material such as weekly promo posters, try an alternative so the team doesn't stop if there is a disruption.

Practical steps for developers using the Canva Connect API

For developers, a noteworthy change is the merger of the Platform team into the product organization. There have been no API changes announced, but the roadmap and priorities may shift. Three things you can do now:

• Monitor the changelog and deprecation announcements on canva.dev, and subscribe to developer emails.
• Wrap all Canva calls in one adapter (module or service) so it's easy to replace when the endpoint changes. We previously discussed similar migration patterns in OpenAI's Agent Builder wrap-up article.
• Automate design backups via the official export endpoint, then save the results in your own storage.

How to export designs via API?

According to Canva documentation, exports are asynchronous. You create a job with POST https://api.canva.com/rest/v1/exports (requires OAuth scope design:content:read), then check the status until success. Example of creating a PDF export job:

curl --request POST 'https://api.canva.com/rest/v1/exports' \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $CANVA_TOKEN" \
  --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  --data '{
    "design_id": "DESIGN_ID",
    "format": { "type": "pdf", "export_quality": "regular" }
  }'

The response contains object job with id and status ( in_progress, success, or failed). On success, job.urls contains a download link that expires after 24 hours, so immediately copy it to your storage. Example Node.js script (18+) for polling and downloading:

// backup-canva.mjs — jalankan: CANVA_TOKEN=... node backup-canva.mjs DESIGN_ID
import { writeFile } from "node:fs/promises";

const API = "https://api.canva.com/rest/v1";
const headers = {
  Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.CANVA_TOKEN}`,
  "Content-Type": "application/json",
};
const designId = process.argv[2];

const create = await fetch(`${API}/exports`, {
  method: "POST",
  headers,
  body: JSON.stringify({ design_id: designId, format: { type: "pdf" } }),
}).then((r) => r.json());

let job = create.job;
while (job.status === "in_progress") {
  await new Promise((r) => setTimeout(r, 3000)); // jeda 3 detik, hemat rate limit
  job = (await fetch(`${API}/exports/${job.id}`, { headers }).then((r) => r.json())).job;
}

if (job.status !== "success") throw new Error(`Ekspor gagal: ${job.error?.code}`);

for (const [i, url] of job.urls.entries()) {
  const buf = Buffer.from(await (await fetch(url)).arrayBuffer());
  await writeFile(`${designId}-${i + 1}.pdf`, buf);
}
console.log(`Tersimpan ${job.urls.length} file`);

Note the rate limits: job creation endpoints are limited to 20 requests per minute per application user, 75 exports per 5 minutes per document, 500 exports per 24 hours per user, and 5,000 exports per 24 hours per application. For bulk backups, schedule them in stages, for example via nightly cron, rather than all at once.

If your application also needs supporting services such as HTML to PDF conversion, OCR, or QR code for printed materials, the local API catalog at console.apipedia.id can be a complement without tying you to one design platform.

What is the lesson from this case?

Canva is not the only one. In two days, two global creative software companies (Squarespace and Canva) cut staff in large numbers. The pattern is similar: generative AI lowers the barrier to basic design, while the cost of running the AI ​​itself is not cheap. For Indonesian businesses and developers, the lesson is simple: today's favorite platforms can change direction tomorrow. Your data and assets should always be portable.

FAQs

Will Canva close or stop operating?

There's no indication of that. Restructuring aims to simplify the organization. Canva is still used by hundreds of millions of people, and the company continues to plan for hybrid working and strengthening the product team in Sydney.

Will the price of Canva Pro in Indonesia increase?

There has been no announcement of price changes. But as revenue growth projections were trimmed, future package adjustments remain possible. Note the renewal date and keep an eye out for emails from Canva.

Is my design safe?

There have been no reports of data or service disruptions related to this announcement. Backing up important designs remains good practice, despite news of layoffs.

Are Canva employees in Indonesia affected by layoffs?

The sources we read did not mention the impact on teams in Indonesia. Canva also has not separated the number of layoffs and those transferred.

Will the Canva Connect API change?

There has been no announcement yet. Since the Platform team is being merged into the product organization, it's a good idea to monitor the changelog in canva.dev and isolate your integrations in a single module.

Source

• TechCrunch: Canva lays off over 1,200 people amid slowing growth (4 Nov 2026)
• CNN Indonesia: Canva Lays Off Thousands of Employees, What's the Reason? (4 Nov 2026)
• Telset: Canva Lays Off 1,271 Employees, 22 Percent of Staff Affected
• IBTimes UK: Canva Layoffs, Six-Month Pay and $10,000 Grants
• Kontan: Indonesia Becomes World's Third Largest Canva Market (Feb 2026)
• Canva Developers: Create design export jobs