Canva, a leading online photo and video editing platform, suffered a widespread outage, preventing users worldwide from accessing its services. Reports of “Connection timed out” errors and slow performance flooded social media and outage trackers, disrupting workflows for designers, marketers, and creators.
Downdetector recorded a peak of over 1,400 user complaints, with issues spanning desktop and mobile versions. Users reported error messages like “The initial connection between Cloudflare’s network and the origin web server timed out,” alongside failed uploads and frozen editing tools. In India alone, 1,300 users flagged problems, per Digit. The outage began around 12:08 IST, with no confirmed resolution timeline by 16:50 AEST.
We’re on it! We’re aware some people are having trouble accessing Canva. We're working as quickly as we can to get things back up and running. For updates, visit https://t.co/Ba1jBJV7PP. We really appreciate your patience!
— Canva (@canva) May 26, 2025Canva acknowledged the issue on its official status page: “Our engineering team is actively investigating and working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”
The outage affected Canva’s global user base, with reports from the U.S., Latin America, and Asia. “Canva is down, and I’ve been refreshing for 10 minutes thinking it was my internet,” one user posted on X. Professionals relying on Canva for deadlines expressed frustration, with some turning to alternatives like Adobe Express or Visme.
Tech analyst Dr. Priya Sharma from the University of Melbourne explains, “Canva’s reliance on Cloudflare for server connectivity makes it vulnerable to timeout errors during high traffic. Such outages highlight the need for robust infrastructure.” She notes that while Canva’s quick acknowledgement is positive, frequent disruptions could erode user trust.
