What happens to Canva accounts when the owner dies

Use the Privacy requests form at canva.com/help/legal-form, and email privacy@canva.com — the same page states that a privacy request the form does not cover can be emailed to that address, and an estate request is not one of the options the form offers. Canva also publishes a postal address for its Head of Privacy (Canva Pty Ltd, 110 Kippax St, Surry Hills NSW 2010, Australia). Canva does not publish executor verification requirements, so send the standard proof up front: a certified death certificate, letters testamentary or another court order showing authority to act, the executor's photo ID, the email address the account is registered under, and the digital-assets clause from the will or trust if there is one.

There is no documented executor file-access path, so it is a request rather than a right. Canva does have the mechanism — an export tool in account settings that packages uploaded images, videos, fonts, and designs, plus the personal data on file, into a ZIP (desktop only, 24 to 72 hours to build, download link valid for 14 days) — and an executor can ask Canva to produce that export for the estate, citing the digital-assets consent clause in the will or trust under the state's fiduciary access to digital assets act. Canva decides at its discretion. No one should try to sign in as the account holder: the Terms of Use require each person to have their own account and prohibit letting another party use someone's credentials.

All designs, folders, templates, uploads, teams, and apps the user created are scheduled for permanent deletion. Canva deletes the account 14 days after the request, and Canva's own guidance is that once deleted, the account cannot be recovered. The Terms of Use put it the same way: on termination the user loses access to their Designs and User Content, and Canva may delete all of it unless legally prohibited. This is why an executor should ask Canva to preserve the account first and deal with deletion last.

Yes, on a paid team. An admin on Canva Teams, Business, or Enterprise can transfer a member's folders, designs, templates, videos, audio, media uploads, and shared content to another member as part of removing them from the team. The transferred content lands in a folder named after that person on the new owner's Projects page and keeps its sharing permissions; comments and activity history do not come across. It runs in minutes (over 30 minutes for very large transfers) and cannot be undone. It only works on removal — content cannot be transferred if the member leaves on their own. Ownership transfer is on by default, but a team created before June 1, 2026 has to enable it under Settings > Controls first. Canva asks the admin to confirm the departing person consented and to follow privacy laws where personal data is involved, which is a reason to raise the death with Canva rather than treat it as routine offboarding.

The owner seat cannot be moved by anyone else. The Terms of Use state that only the Team Owner may assign a new Team Owner, and the documented flow is a nomination made by the current owner, which the nominee then has 30 days to accept — a deceased owner cannot make it, and it will not work at all if the owner was the only person left on the team. Canva's help center points team members who can no longer reach their owner to the in-product Help Assistant so Canva can follow up. In practice a survivor is asking Canva to make an exception, which Canva decides at its discretion. If a transfer does go through, the plan and its benefits stay the same.

It keeps renewing. Canva paid plans automatically renew each billing cycle and are not cancelled by a death, so the card on file continues to be charged — a live estate liability an executor should close quickly. Check the billing email or bank statement first: a plan bought through Google Play, the App Store, or PayPal has to be cancelled there rather than inside Canva, and uninstalling the mobile app does not cancel it. Cancelling stops future payments but does not refund fees already paid, and paid features stay available until the end of the current billing cycle. Canva also offers a pause of up to 3 months as an alternative. Canva's guidance is to cancel the plan before deleting the account, so charges do not continue.