Metro newspaper front page and website homepage on 9 October 2026
Metro is planning to make around 60 job cuts as it seeks to get “back on a sustainable footing”.
Press Gazette understands 90 Metro employees across the free newspaper and website have been told their jobs are at risk.
Of those, 61 are expected to be made redundant with 29 roles remaining.
The entire Metro team has not been put at risk, meaning more than 29 people will continue to work at the brand after the process is complete.
The proposals follow the sudden departure of editor-in-chief Deborah Arthurs and executive editor Richard Hartley-Parkinson last month.
Metro has brought back its former editor Ted Young, who left the business in 2023 when Arthurs’ remit extended from the website to take in the print newspaper, on an interim basis.
He is leading the newsroom for three months while an operational review of Metro is carried out.
Staff were informed about the scale of the proposed job cuts this week and a consultation process is now underway.
They were told last month that “significant redundancies” were expected.
Staff were also told that three new content creator roles are being created at the same time.
Staff will know whether they continue to have a job by 9 November, and those leaving will have their last working day on 30 November.
Metro’s last round of job cuts was in November last year as staff were told it was “focusing our resources in areas with the highest potential for growth” following drops in website traffic and advertising revenues.
Before that, the last time significant cuts were made was in 2023 as Metro underwent a major restructure to deal with financial losses deemed “in no way sustainable” following the Covid-19 pandemic. This led to a period of profitability at the brand.
Metro’s UK online website/app audience in September was 11.4 million , down by a fifth compared to a year earlier according to Ipsos iris.
Two-and-a-half years ago (just before the arrival of Google’s AI Overviews in the UK) Metro had a monthly UK audience of 16.1 million – meaning a drop of 29% since May 2024.
Metro no longer publishes its print figures but in January it had an average daily distribution of 952,483 across the UK where it is given out in locations like train stations and buses in major cities and towns. Staff have been told of plans to realign the distribution “to the areas with highest demand”.
Metro has been undergoing a “thorough review” since June after transferring from Mail publisher DMG Media to another DMGT subsidiary Harmsworth Media , which also includes New Scientist and The i Paper.
When Arthurs and Hartley-Parkinson departed with immediate effect in September, a memo said the review of Metro aimed to put the brand “back on a sustainable footing, as the current structure is no longer aligned with the economic realities of our market.
“Securing Metro’s future will require radical change that reimagines how we operate and what areas we focus on.”
The areas of the review include “content strategy, editorial structure and processes (both print and digital)” and potential areas for future growth were cited as “new media, newsletters and advertising partnerships”.
DMG New Media, which launched last year, produces creator-led social video content for Metro and Metro Entertainment channels and other brands including the Daily Mail, Mail Sport and specialist accounts like The Spotlight also covering entertainment.
Fellow free newspaper Evening Standard, owned by Lord Evgeny Lebedev, has faced years of losses, closed its daily print edition in September 2024 to go weekly, and is also seeing its website audience fall (down 13% in September to 8.9 million people in the UK).
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