YouTube banner & image sizes in 2026 (with templates)

The thing people search is "youtube banner size" or "youtube thumbnail size," and the thing they actually need is the catch behind both. The banner is the worst offender on any platform for upload-versus-display mismatch. You hand YouTube a 2560 x 1440 image and then watch your logo vanish on a phone, because the part of the banner that survives on a small screen is a thin strip in the dead center. Nobody tells you that until you've already exported the wrong thing twice.

So I built the version I wanted: every current YouTube dimension in one tool, click a number to copy it, and the banner safe area drawn right on the template so your logo never lands in the crop zone. It's the YouTube slice of the full social media image size guide, which does the same thing for every other platform.

Pick a surface, copy the size, or grab the template. Then read the banner section, because that's where the money is.

The banner, and why it eats your logo

Upload your channel banner at 2560 x 1440. YouTube also calls it channel art, so if you went looking for "channel art size" that's the same thing. That's the recommended size, 16:9, and the minimum YouTube will accept is 2048 x 1152. File cap is 6 MB, which is lower than people expect, so a heavy PNG can get rejected.

Here's the part that matters. That 2560 x 1440 canvas only ever shows in full on a TV. Everywhere else it crops, and it crops differently per device. Desktop shows roughly 2560 x 423. A tablet shows about 1855 x 423. A phone crops all the way in to 1546 x 423, dead center. So the only rectangle guaranteed to survive on every screen is that centered 1546 x 423 box. Do the math on the full canvas and the inset is 507 pixels off each side and a little over 500 off the top and bottom. Anything outside that center strip is decoration that some viewers will never see.

That's the whole trick. Build the banner at 2560 x 1440 so it looks right on a TV, but put your channel name, your logo, your tagline, every word that has to be read, inside the centered 1546 x 423 zone. The template in the tool has that box drawn on it, so you can see exactly where the phone crop lands before you commit.

YouTube thumbnail size (1280 x 720) and the file cap

The thumbnail is 1280 x 720, 16:9, and the minimum width YouTube takes is 640. Always make the full 1280 x 720 anyway so it stays sharp when someone's browsing on a big screen.

The file cap depends on where you upload from, and that catches people. Upload from a desktop browser and you've got 50 MB to play with, which is more room than any thumbnail needs. The catch is the mobile app: there the cap drops to 2 MB, and a detailed photo background or a PNG exported without thinking about it will blow right past that. So if YouTube refuses your thumbnail on your phone but the same file went up fine on the laptop, that's the reason. Upload from desktop, or drop it to a JPG and run it through a compressor first if you're stuck on mobile.

One more thing on the thumbnail: the duration badge sits over the bottom-right corner, and on some surfaces the title wraps right under the image. Keep faces and text out of that lower-right corner so the timestamp doesn't land on someone's mouth.

Shorts and the rest of the channel

A Short is 1080 x 1920, 9:16 vertical, the same as everywhere else vertical video lives now. The caption, your handle, and the action buttons sit along the bottom and the right rail, so keep the important stuff in the upper-center of the frame or the UI covers it.

Your channel profile picture uploads at 800 x 800 and displays as a circle about 98 pixels across, so center your face or your mark and give it padding, because the corners get masked off. The video watermark, that little subscribe badge in the corner of the player, is 150 x 150 and wants to stay under 1 MB. Use a transparent PNG with a tight high-contrast mark there, since it renders small.

Community posts run 1280 x 720 for landscape or 1080 x 1080 for square, with a generous 16 MB cap and animated GIFs allowed. Most channels use the landscape size because it matches their thumbnails. End-screen elements live on the same 1280 x 720 player canvas; just remember the end-screen cards and the subscribe bubble float over the bottom and right, so leave that area clear in the last 20 seconds.

File sizes and formats, quick version

The caps are the part that trips uploads, so keep them straight. Banner is 6 MB. The thumbnail is 50 MB from desktop but only 2 MB if you upload from the mobile app, so that's the one to watch on a phone. Profile picture is 4 MB. The watermark wants to be under 1 MB. Community images get a roomy 16 MB and the podcast playlist cover gets 10.

JPG and PNG cover almost everything. Reach for PNG when there's text or a sharp logo edge in the image and you want it crisp, JPG when it's a photo and you want a smaller file, especially if you're posting the thumbnail from your phone and bumping that 2 MB mobile cap. YouTube also accepts GIF and BMP on most of these surfaces, and community posts will play an animated GIF, which is the one place motion makes sense.

Just grab the template

If you don't feel like measuring any of this, hit the template button in the tool up top. You get a PNG for every YouTube surface at the exact upload size, named so you know which is which, with the banner safe area and the crop marks drawn right on the canvas. Drop the banner template into Figma or Photoshop as a reference layer, design on top of it, keep your logo inside the box, export. The whole pack zips in one click.

It's the same setup I use for the print dimensions tool, aimed at screens instead of paper. If you build assets for both, the print one handles DPI and bleed the way this one handles crops and safe zones, so the workflow carries over.

If you're cutting the same video up for vertical, I built matching pages for the two I reach for most alongside YouTube: TikTok image sizes and Instagram image sizes. Same copy-paste numbers, same template packs, sized for where each one crops.

FAQ

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