Ubisoft Barcelona staff strike six days a month as studio ends hybrid working
Ubisoft’s Barcelona mobile studio has told staff they must be in the office five days a week from 1 January 2027, ending the three-day hybrid pattern currently in place. The change was originally set for 1 October 2026 and was pushed back three months by the company without negotiating with worker representatives. CGT’s video-game section has called an open-ended strike of six days a month, falling on the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 16th, 17th and 18th. Roughly half the studio walked out on the first strike day, 1 September, with about forty people gathered outside the office.
Why this matters
If you work remotely under a Spanish contract, the sequence here is the one to watch: a hybrid arrangement in place, a unilateral announcement that it is ending, and a delay to the start date offered instead of a negotiation. Spain’s Ley 10/2021 requires distance working to rest on a written agreement, and treats changes to that agreement as something to be agreed rather than instructed. A studio moving from three days at home to none is not a scheduling adjustment; it changes the contract that people accepted. Whether your own arrangement is protected depends on what you signed and what your convenio says, which is why having the agreement in writing matters far more than most people assume when they are happy with the arrangement.
Context
This is a Barcelona-specific dispute at the mobile studio, distinct from the pan-European Ubisoft return-to-office mandate that prompted a 1,200-worker walkout in May 2026. It also runs alongside the Airbus dispute in Spain, where an attempt to cut telework from two days to one triggered an indefinite strike that workers voted in August to continue. Two organised disputes in the same country over the same question, within weeks of each other, suggest employers testing how far agreed home-working days can be reclaimed and finding that in Spain they are harder to reclaim than elsewhere.
What to watch
Whether the January date holds, and whether the dispute reaches the courts. Spanish employment law on unilateral changes to agreed telework is being actively tested at present, and the outcome will matter well beyond this studio.