Ubisoft closes Winnipeg and Belgrade studios in sweeping layoffs

Ubisoft’s latest restructuring is hitting players where it hurts: the teams that build, support, and keep its biggest games running. The company is closing its Winnipeg and Belgrade studios and cutting additional roles across the business, with as many as 380 people potentially affected. Barcelona is also being tightened around Rainbow Six work, a move that points to fewer hands on everything outside Ubisoft’s most protected live service.

The Winnipeg shutdown matters beyond the job losses because that studio sat deep in Ubisoft’s technical stack. Ubisoft Winnipeg was founded in 2018 and worked on Anvil, Snowdrop, and Scalar technology, the tools that feed projects across Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Rainbow Six, and XDefiant. Ubisoft described Winnipeg as its only studio focused on technology for the company’s Canadian studios, so this closure looks less like a trim and more like a cut into the company’s engine room.

Belgrade’s closure carries a similar kind of fallout. Ubisoft Belgrade was established in 2016 and contributed to Ghost Recon Wildlands, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, Steep, The Crew 2, Rainbow Six, Riders Republic, and Skull and Bones. That is the kind of support studio that quietly props up live ops, content drops, and the long tail of franchise maintenance, even when its name never appears on the box. When a studio like that disappears, players usually feel it later as slower updates, thinner support, and fewer teams available to absorb delays or emergencies.

Barcelona is being reshaped rather than outright shuttered, but the signal is the same: narrower priorities. Reports from June 10 said the studio would now focus solely on Rainbow Six projects, and 51 employees were expected to be affected there. For Rainbow Six players, that could mean Ubisoft is concentrating resources on its most durable competitive franchise while pulling support from less central work elsewhere.

This all lands inside a bigger pattern of retrenchment that Ubisoft itself set in motion on January 21, 2026, when it announced a major organizational, operational, and portfolio reset aimed at restoring sustainable growth. By the end of March 2026, Ubisoft said headcount had dropped to 16,590, down by about 1,200 year over year. The Winnipeg and Belgrade closures show what that reset looks like on the ground: fewer studios, fewer support layers, and a sharper bet that a smaller number of franchises can carry the load.