Ubisoft Closes Winnipeg and Belgrade Studios, Cutting Around 380 Jobs in Its Third 2026 Layoff Wave

Ubisoft confirmed Wednesday morning that two of its development studios are permanently done. Ubisoft Winnipeg, operating since 2018, is closed. Ubisoft Belgrade, a Serbian co-development studio founded in 2016, is gone. Around 100 employees from Belgrade and 65 from Winnipeg were told in a meeting with management that their jobs no longer exist. That is not the whole picture. Restructuring at Ubisoft Barcelona, cuts at Ubisoft San Francisco, and staff being ramped off Rainbow Six Siege at Ubisoft Montreal bring the total affected headcount to approximately 380 people across the company.

Employees found out Wednesday morning in meetings with management. Shortly after the news broke internally, workers from Winnipeg began posting on LinkedIn. One former programmer wrote: 'It is officially my turn to make one of these posts. Today, we got the very sad news that Ubisoft Winnipeg will be closing its doors. This job has been the highlight of my career. I have worked with so many incredible people on so many amazing games. I am grateful for the opportunities that have been granted to me over the last six years.' Another added: 'After 5.5 years at Ubisoft Winnipeg, I am sad to say that they are closing their doors and I join a large group of very talented and passionate people who are now open to work.' These are not abstract numbers. They are developers who spent years building games millions of people played.

What These Studios Actually Built

Ubisoft Belgrade was founded in 2016 with just 10 people and grew to around 100. Over its decade of operation, the Serbian studio worked as a co-developer on titles that include Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands and Breakpoint, The Crew 2, Rainbow Six, and Skull and Bones. Support studios like Belgrade are the invisible backbone of modern AAA development. They handle gameplay systems, level geometry, engine work, and dozens of other tasks that do not make press releases but are absolutely necessary for shipping a large open-world game. Calling them secondary is a misreading of how the industry actually functions.

Ubisoft Winnipeg had a similar profile. Opened in 2018 primarily as a support and technology studio, Winnipeg developed deep expertise in Ubisoft's proprietary Anvil and Snowdrop engines. Over eight years, the studio contributed to Rainbow Six Siege, XDefiant, Far Cry 6, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Open world construction was a core competency there. That kind of engine and technical experience takes years to build and cannot be reconstructed from scratch. When the studio closes, that institutional knowledge goes with it.

Rainbow Six Siege Takes the Hardest Hit

The most visible damage lands on Rainbow Six Siege, one of Ubisoft's last genuinely profitable live-service titles with a sustained player base. Ubisoft Montreal, the flagship studio behind the game, is losing 120 developers who worked on Siege directly, along with approximately 50 more from Rainbow Six Siege Mobile and an unannounced project. Ubisoft Barcelona is not closing outright but is being restructured around a sole purpose: supporting Rainbow Six. Around 51 positions are being cut there as part of that refocusing. Taken together, the Siege development pipeline across multiple studios is being reduced significantly at a moment when the game has no confirmed major update or sequel on the horizon.

Ubisoft's official response was this: 'Rainbow Six Siege remains a strong brand. As projects move through different stages of development and live operations, it is normal practice to adjust team size and resource allocation based on evolving priorities and operational needs.' That is a polished way of saying the studio network that supported the game has been thinned out, and the company would prefer not to discuss what comes next for it.

The Third Wave of 2026, Not the Last

This is the third round of Ubisoft layoffs in 2026 alone. In March, Red Storm Entertainment, the Tom Clancy studio that built the Ghost Recon series, lost 105 people and was repurposed from a game-making operation into a technical support function for the Snowdrop engine. Before that, Ubisoft Halifax and Stockholm were closed in a broader restructuring that also shrank teams at Abu Dhabi, Redlynx, and Massive Entertainment. Add the current round and Ubisoft has now eliminated a substantial portion of its global studio network across six months. The Vantage Studios subsidiary, created via the 1.16 billion euro Tencent deal announced in October 2025, is clearly driving the direction here. Tencent holds a 25 percent stake in Vantage, which focuses on Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six. Everything outside those three franchises is being evaluated for cost reduction, and studios that served adjacent roles are being cut first.

Gaming journalist Destin Legarie captured the mood on Thursday when he wrote: 'What a crappy day following a great weekend. Ubisoft closed a studio and had layoffs. Yesterday Bungie posted their final update for D2 with layoffs looming. Just generally stinks.' He posted this alongside news of Xbox preparing its own significant staff reductions, a fact that makes the current moment one of the bleaker stretches the industry has seen in years. Three major publishers cutting jobs in the same 48-hour window is not a coincidence. It reflects how far the post-pandemic correction has continued beyond what anyone predicted.

The Tencent Deal Made This Inevitable

The Ubisoft that existed before the Tencent deal was bloated, yes, but it was also one of the few major publishers with genuine studio diversity. Winnipeg was doing engine work that helped multiple franchises. Belgrade was a reliable partner across genres. Neither of those studios was failing. They were cut because the Vantage model requires a focused, leaner operation that can service three specific franchises efficiently. When a publisher takes on a strategic investor with defined franchise preferences, the studios that do not directly serve those preferences become liabilities on a spreadsheet. That process is now producing tangible consequences for hundreds of people who built careers at those companies.

The Vantage leadership structure is also worth watching. Creative and leadership decisions at the subsidiary sit with Christophe Derennes and Charlie Guillemot, the son of Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. That arrangement drew nepotism criticism when it was announced. What it means practically is that the restructuring being executed across the global Ubisoft network is being directed by people with strong personal and financial stakes in making the Tencent partnership pay off. The studios being closed are not making those decisions. They are living with them.

A Difficult Market for the People Affected

Around 380 people are now looking for work in a gaming industry that has been shedding jobs continuously since 2023. The hiring market for studio workers has not recovered. Experienced developers from support studios often struggle to find comparable positions because their work is collaborative and specific, and studios hiring full-time staff right now are not plentiful. The Ubisoft brand on a resume has also become more complicated as the company's public perception has shifted over repeated controversies, failed launches, and now its third round of layoffs in under a year. For the people who built engine tools in Winnipeg or co-developed open worlds in Belgrade, the near-term path forward is genuinely uncertain. Ubisoft has not publicly acknowledged the Belgrade or Winnipeg closures in any official capacity, and no comment was provided to outlets that requested one. Sources familiar with the situation say interproject processes at the company are being revamped with new strategies, which is a clean way of describing a publisher that is cutting the structures it built over a decade and betting the next phase of its existence on three franchises that a Chinese tech giant decided were worth funding. That may turn out to be a viable path. But it will not look much like the Ubisoft that employed thousands of people at studios like Belgrade, Winnipeg, Halifax, Stockholm, and Red Storm over the past several years.