Vodafone axed thousands of jobs in 2026 in major cost-cutting drive

Vodafone reduced its workforce across its UK and European divisions by 3,000 roles during the first half of the year, driven by a wider cost-reduction strategy designed to stimulate growth.

The telecommunications firm confirmed the workforce reductions coincided with removing €200 million (£165.4 million) in expenses across its European business. This included €50 million (£41 million) of savings in the UK following its agreement to merge with Three UK in 2025 to form VodafoneThree.

The business did not disclose the precise number of positions eliminated within the UK, where the company is currently headquartered.

Redundancies also affected shared services operations, which handle administrative support functions for the division from support hubs located in India and eastern Europe.

On Monday, Vodafone revealed plans for a further 2,300 job cuts in Germany to help revive performance in the country, forming part of a broader target to slash annual expenses by more than €2 billion (£1.64 billion) across European and shared operations by 2030.

Spurred by the spending cuts, half-year results showed the group increased its full-year earnings guidance once again, now anticipating between €13.2 billion and €13.4 billion (£10.8 billion to £11 billion).

This implies growth of around 6 per cent to 8 per cent on an organic basis.

This is up from previous guidance for underlying earnings of 13 billion to 13.3 billion euros (£10.7 billion to £10.9 billion) when it last hiked its outlook in July.

It comes despite Vodafone revealing it swung to a statutory pre-tax loss of 373 million euros (£309 million) in the six months to September 30 from profits of 2.1 billion euros (£1.7 billion) a year earlier due in part to a mammoth 4.85 billion euro (£3.98 billion) writedown in Germany and other impairment charges.

Margherita Della Valle, group chief executive of Vodafone, said: “I am very happy about our overall group performance, but Germany is not yet where it needs to be.

“We have a clear action plan in progress, which is structurally simplifying our German operations and improving customer satisfaction across all of our services.”

She has been leading a hefty cost-cutting drive since taking the top job in 2023, with 11,000 roles axed between then and the end of September this year and annual costs cut by 700 million euros (£580 million) so far.