Disney cuts hundreds more jobs again: Pixar is hit hardest

The Walt Disney Company carried out another round of layoffs on July 21, 2026, cutting several hundred jobs in its third workforce reduction of the year. Pixar Animation Studios in Emeryville took the biggest hit, with additional cuts at National Geographic and ESPN.

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Pixar was hit hardest. Around 150 roles were eliminated at the Emeryville campus, mostly in production and operations, which works out to less than 10% of the studio’s staff. Disney tied the move to CEO Josh D’Amaro’s One Disney strategy, which the company has pitched as a way to cut down silos, streamline operations, and make Disney more agile.

Disney also cut jobs at National Geographic, inside Disney Entertainment Television, and at ESPN following the NFL Network acquisition. At the same time, Disney says it’s continuously reviewing how resources are allocated and reinvesting as the media business keeps changing.

Pixar is dealing with pressure on a few fronts. Disney is dialing back from the heavier Disney+ output period, originals like Hoppers have had a tough time, and Toy Story 5 is now pushing toward $1 billion worldwide. That only adds to the sense that franchises are still the safer bet.

For anyone who follows Disney or Pixar closely, the context matters. Pixar already cut about 175 jobs in 2024, and the long-and-lean model that’s been reported since then has been tied to bottlenecks, crunch concerns, low morale, and now another destabilizing shake-up during an ongoing transition at a studio that helped define modern animation.