Ubisoft employees are planning a strike in response to recent cost-cutting efforts affecting the company’s Barcelona branch, having announced as much in late June 2026. The protest is set to take place across several days, though it is structured to avoid completely halting the Ubisoft subsidiary’s operations.
Ubisoft’s latest restructuring has already affected multiple teams across its global network. Earlier in June, the company confirmed additional downsizing, including closures of Ubisoft Belgrade and Winnipeg, as well as a significant restructuring of its Barcelona branch. The Spanish studio is now being refocused around the Rainbow Six franchise instead of its previous range of support work.
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Ubisoft Barcelona Workers Are Planning Several Strike Days
Faced with the recent cuts, Ubisoft Barcelona employees now intend to strike on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons between June 30 and July 16, totaling six partial work stoppages over three weeks. The strike is a direct response to the early June 2026 restructuring that resulted in 51 Ubisoft Barcelona employees losing their jobs. That is roughly the equivalent of 28% of the studio’s pre-downsizing workforce. The newly announced strike is a union affair, and not the first of its kind in 2026. A more comprehensive three-day strike was organized by Ubisoft employees back in mid-February, stemming from a coordinated effort by five French unions.
Ubisoft Barcelona Strike Demands
- Binding new studio mandate protecting the 51 employees affected by the latest downsizing
- Five-year guarantee against future collective layoffs
- Immediate execution of previously agreed internal promotions
- Return to a 60% monthly work-from-home ratio
- Review of salary improvement plans and social benefits
The strike demands focus on stronger job security and improved working conditions. Employees are seeking a binding new agreement that would protect the 51 affected roles, establish a five-year safeguard against future collective layoffs, immediately implement previously agreed promotions, restore work-from-home flexibility to 60% of each month, and reopen negotiations over salary improvements and social benefits. It remains unclear whether the summer strike at Ubisoft has a feasible chance of achieving its goals. However, because the action currently amounts to a partial work stoppage across the first half of July 2026, the union organizing the protest appears to be preserving the option of broader stoppages if management does not respond to its demands.
The demands related to the work-from-home model are older than the rest of the rationale behind the upcoming strike. Ubisoft has already faced labor tensions over return-to-office policies, with unions representing its Barcelona developers previously suing over the company’s RTO mandate in November 2024. No public resolution of that case has been reported as of June 2026.
Looking at the bigger picture, the timing of the summer 2026 strike is notable because Ubisoft has been trying to present its ongoing restructuring as a path toward greater stability. The company has recently deepened its focus on major franchises through the Tencent-backed Vantage Studios, while simultaneously reorganizing its remaining subsidiaries into largely genre-focused “creative houses,” announced between late 2025 and early 2026. The subsequent strikes signal that workers are now pushing back against what they see as the human cost of that strategy, even as leadership insists it is the only path to sustainability for the embattled developer-publisher. According to recent management announcements, Ubisoft studio closures will continue until early 2029, though not necessarily at a consistent pace.
