Discord image sizes in 2026: icon, banner, emoji specs

Discord is the one platform where the pixel size is the easy part. You can nail every dimension and still have your upload bounce, because the thing that actually trips people up on Discord is the file-size cap, not the resolution. A custom emoji has to come in under 256 KB. A sticker under 512 KB. Those are tiny numbers, and a clean-looking 128 square PNG will blow right past 256 KB if you don't watch it.

The other half of the problem is the crop. Your server icon and your avatar both get masked to a circle, so whatever's in the corners is gone. The server banner and the invite splash only show up if the server is boosted, which is a thing half the size guides forget to mention. So the question isn't just "what size," it's "what size, under what file cap, with what cropped off, and does my server even have this surface unlocked." It's the Discord slice of the full social media image size guide, which does the same thing for every other platform.

Here's the whole set with the real numbers. Click any one to copy it, or pull a template if you'd rather start from the right rectangle.

The two gotchas before anything else

Two things matter more than the pixel dimensions on Discord, so I'm putting them up top.

First, the file caps. Custom emoji max out at 256 KB. Stickers max out at 512 KB. That's it. A photo-heavy 128 square can easily land at 400 KB and Discord will just refuse it. So for emoji you want flat color, hard edges, a transparent background, and an export that stays small. PNG-8 or a tightly compressed PNG-24 usually does it. If you're animating, the GIF has to fit the same 256 KB, which means short loops and few colors.

Second, the circle. The server icon is 512 x 512 and the user avatar is also square (upload 512, minimum 128), and both get cropped to a circle in the app. So anything sitting in the corners of your square gets cut. Center your mark, give it padding, and don't put text right against an edge.

Discord server icon size (512 x 512) and banner

The server icon is 512 x 512, a 1:1 square that Discord shows as a circle. Just upload it at 512 and you're fine; that stays sharp on a retina screen and scales down clean. Keep the design centered. An animated GIF icon needs Boost Level 1.

For the Discord banner size, Discord recommends 960 x 540, a 16:9 strip. You can also hand it a 1920 x 1080 and Discord will accept that and auto-resize it down to fit, so either upload works. The static banner needs Boost Level 2 to even appear, and an animated one bumps that to Boost Level 3, so if your server isn't boosted that high, the surface doesn't exist yet. When it does show, the server name and a dark gradient sit over the lower-left in the channel sidebar, so keep your important art up and to the right.

Role icons are 64 x 64 and need Boost Level 2 as well. They render at roughly 20 pixels next to a username, so use one bold shape. Fine detail just turns to mush at that size. The file cap here is 256 KB, same as emoji.

The invite splash, if the server's boosted

The invite splash is the big background behind a server invite, 1920 x 1080 at 16:9. It needs Boost Level 1. The invite card, the server name, and the join button all sit over the center of that image, so anything you care about should live toward the edges where the UI isn't covering it. Treat the middle as occupied.

Your own profile: avatar and banner

The user avatar is square, upload at 512 x 512 with a minimum of 128, and it's masked to a circle everywhere it appears. So this is the same deal as the server icon: center your face, leave room around it, treat the corners as gone. An animated avatar needs Nitro.

The profile banner is 600 x 240, a 5:2 strip that sits behind your profile card when someone clicks your name. Your avatar overlaps the lower-left corner of it, so don't put anything you want seen down there. Design at exactly 600 x 240 and you'll dodge the unexpected cropping that shows up when people upload a random aspect ratio. An animated banner needs Nitro too.

Emoji and stickers, where the caps live

Custom emoji are 128 x 128 and have to stay under 256 KB. Discord scales them down hard: about 32 x 32 in a message, 48 x 48 in a reaction. So whatever you make has to read at the size of a small icon, not at the size you're looking at in your editor. Bold shapes survive. Tiny text does not.

Stickers are 320 x 320, exactly, under 512 KB, on a transparent background. Discord accepts PNG, APNG for animation, or a Lottie JSON file. The 320 is a hard target, not a suggestion, so export at that exact size. And again, watch the weight. A detailed sticker will hit 512 KB faster than you'd think.

Events

The scheduled event cover is the one people draw at the wrong height. Upload it at 800 x 400, a 2:1 image, because Discord trims the top and bottom and only keeps a central band roughly 800 x 320 tall. So the safe move is to fill the 800 x 400 canvas but treat the middle horizontal strip as the part that actually survives. Keep your text and any faces inside that band, off the top and bottom edges. It's been a running complaint in Discord's own support forum for a while, so I'd rather over-pad than guess. PNG or JPG, no Boost level needed.

File sizes and formats, quick version

The pattern on Discord is that the big surfaces are generous and the small ones are brutal. Icons, banners, avatars, splash backgrounds, and event covers all sit under a roomy upload limit, somewhere around 10 MB, so you basically can't hit it with a normal image. Emoji at 256 KB and stickers at 512 KB are the ones you'll actually fight with.

For formats, PNG is your default. Use it anywhere you've got transparency or sharp edges, which on Discord is most things. JPG works for the photo-style banners and splash backgrounds where a smaller file matters more than a clean alpha channel. GIF covers animation on icons, avatars, and emoji, but it still has to fit the file cap, so keep animated emoji short and low-color. Stickers add APNG and Lottie to the mix if you want smoother motion than a GIF gives you.

Just grab the template

If you don't feel like babysitting any of this, hit the template pack button in the tool up top. You get a PNG for every Discord surface at the exact upload size, named so you know which is which, with the circle crop and the safe area drawn right on the canvas. Drop one into Figma or Photoshop as a reference layer and build on top of it. For emoji and stickers the template gives you the exact square to fill so you're not guessing at the 320 target.

It's the same idea behind the print dimensions tool, just aimed at screens instead of paper. If you make assets for print too, that one handles DPI and bleed the same way this one handles crops and caps.

If you're building a community across platforms, I put together matching pages for the two that sit closest to Discord: Twitch image sizes and YouTube image sizes. Same copy-paste numbers, same template packs, just sized for where each one crops.

FAQ

The full set, with the circle crops, the safe zones, and the downloadable templates, is in the tool at the top. Copy what you need, or take the whole pack.