Twitch Banner Size

What the “Twitch banner size” actually refers to

When people search for “Twitch banner size”, they are usually conflating three completely different images that all live on a Twitch channel page. Getting the right number depends entirely on which one you mean:

1. The profile banner — the horizontal strip behind your profile picture at the top of your channel. 1200 × 480 pixels, 5:2 aspect ratio.
2. The offline banner (also called the video-player banner) — the image that fills the video player when you are not currently live. 1920 × 1080 pixels, 16:9 aspect ratio.
3. Info panels — the stacked image blocks below your stream used for “About”, “Schedule”, “Donate”, and social links. Maximum 320 pixels wide, flexible height, under 1 MB each.

These are not interchangeable. The single most common mistake is uploading the 1200 × 480 profile banner into the offline-banner slot, where it does not fill the 16:9 player and ends up pillarboxed or stretched. This page gives you the exact, current dimensions for all three, verified against Twitch’s own Channel Page Setup help documentation in June 2026, plus the safe-zone and file-format rules that determine whether your channel looks professional or amateur.

The profile banner: 1200 × 480

The profile banner is the decorative strip at the very top of your channel page. It is visible whether you are live or offline, so it is the closest thing your channel has to a letterhead.

Exact spec:

• Dimensions: 1200 × 480 pixels (5:2 aspect ratio)
• Minimum width: 900 pixels — never go below this
• File formats: JPEG, PNG, or GIF
• Maximum file size: 10 MB
• Colour mode: RGB, 72 DPI (it is a screen image, not print)

Twitch scales your banner based on the width of each viewer’s browser window. Images shorter or taller than 480 px get scaled to 480 px high, and the banner stretches horizontally when a browser is wider than the image. That scaling behaviour is exactly why you should upload at full 1200 × 480 (or larger at the same 5:2 ratio) and never below 900 px wide — anything smaller gets upscaled and looks soft.

The safe-zone reality. Twitch does not publish a fixed pixel safe zone, because the crop changes with browser width and device. The working rule, recommended by Twitch’s own guidance and every reputable size guide, is to keep logos, channel name, and handles within the central ~900 px of the 1200 px width — roughly the middle 75% — and treat the outer edges as bleed that may be cropped on mobile or in narrow windows. Decorative texture can run to the edges; words and logos cannot.

The offline banner: 1920 × 1080

This is the asset most streamers neglect, and it is the highest-leverage one. When your channel is offline, the video player does not go blank — it shows your offline banner. Anyone who finds your channel while you are away sees this image full-size, right where the stream would be.

Exact spec:

• Dimensions: 1920 × 1080 pixels (16:9 aspect ratio — the same shape as a video frame)
• File formats: JPEG, PNG, or GIF
• Maximum file size: 10 MB

Because it occupies the player, the 16:9 ratio is non-negotiable. A 1200 × 480 profile banner dropped here will not fill the frame. Design the offline banner as a working billboard, not just decoration:

• Your schedule — which days and times you stream, with a timezone (this is the single most valuable thing to include).
• Your other socials — YouTube, TikTok, Discord, X handles, so a visitor can follow you somewhere even when you are not live.
• A short status line — “Currently offline — back Thursday 7pm GMT”.
• Branding — logo, colours, the same visual identity as your profile banner.

A visitor who arrives during your offline hours is a follower you can win or lose with this single image. Most channels waste it on a generic “offline” graphic; the ones that grow use it as a 24/7 advert.

Info panels: 320 px wide

Panels are the image blocks stacked below your stream on desktop (and shown in the “About” tab on mobile). They are how you communicate everything that does not fit elsewhere.

Exact spec:

• Maximum width: 320 pixels
• Height: flexible — 100 to 160 px tall is typical
• Maximum file size: 1 MB per panel (note: stricter than the banners)
• Format: PNG recommended; animated GIF allowed

The key discipline is consistent width. Build every panel at the same width (320 px, or a consistent narrower width if you prefer) so the column lines up cleanly down the page. Mismatched panel widths are the most visible sign of a hastily built channel. Common panels: About / Bio, Schedule, Donations or Tips, Gear / Setup, Rules, and a row of social links. Each panel image can be paired with a clickable link in Twitch’s panel editor, so the image is the visual button and the link is set separately.

Profile picture and the rest of the channel kit

While not strictly a “banner”, the profile picture (avatar) is the fourth image people ask about in the same breath:

• Profile picture: recommended 256 × 256 px (1:1), but upload at 800 × 800 to stay sharp wherever Twitch enlarges it. Displayed as a circle, so centre the subject. Under 10 MB, JPEG/PNG/GIF.

A complete “channel kit” therefore has four images at three different sizes: a 1200 × 480 profile banner, a 1920 × 1080 offline banner, one or more 320 px panels, and an 800 × 800 avatar. Build them as a set with a shared colour palette and logo so the channel reads as one brand.

Common mistakes

Mistake 1: Using one image for both banners. The profile banner (1200 × 480, 5:2) and the offline banner (1920 × 1080, 16:9) are different shapes. A single file cannot fill both correctly. Export two crops.

Mistake 2: Putting text near the edges of the profile banner. Because Twitch crops the banner differently across devices and browser widths, edge text gets cut off. Keep words and logos in the central ~900 px.

Mistake 3: Uploading below the recommended size. Anything under 1200 × 480 (and certainly under the 900 px minimum width) gets upscaled and looks blurry. Bigger-at-the-same-ratio is fine; smaller is not.

Mistake 4: Mismatched panel widths. Panels at varying widths break the clean column line. Standardise on one width — 320 px or a consistent narrower value — for every panel.

Mistake 5: A blank or generic offline banner. Leaving the default offline screen, or using a banner with no schedule and no socials, throws away the most valuable conversion surface on your channel.

Mistake 6: Heavy JPEG compression on text. Banners with logos and text should be PNG. Over-compressed JPEGs introduce visible artefacts around lettering that make a channel look cheap.

A note on exporting from this site

The honest situation: the builder on template.how currently exports PDF, DOCX, and print — it does not yet render a pixel-exact PNG canvas at 1200 × 480 or 1920 × 1080. For an image asset like a Twitch banner, the deliverable you actually need is a PNG, and PNG/canvas export is a known gap we are working on.

What this page gives you instead is the thing that is genuinely hard to get right: the exact, current dimensions, safe-zone rules, file limits, and design checklist. Take those numbers into a design tool that exports PNG — Canva (which has Twitch-sized templates built in), Photopea (free, browser-based, Photoshop-like), GIMP, Figma, or Photoshop — set your canvas to the size above, and export. The pixel numbers are the hard part; the tooling is interchangeable.

Worked example

Priya Nair is launching a variety-gaming Twitch channel and wants a coherent channel kit before her first stream. She works in Photopea (free) and builds from a single master.

She starts a 1920 × 1080 canvas. She lays her logo and channel name “PriyaPlays” inside a centred 1200 × 480 guide box, with a soft purple gradient background filling the full frame. From this one file she exports two PNGs: the full 1920 × 1080 frame becomes her offline banner, and the centred 1200 × 480 crop becomes her profile banner. Because everything important sat inside the central box, nothing critical is at risk of being cropped on mobile.

For the offline banner specifically, she adds a second layer on top of the shared branding: “Live: Tue / Thu / Sat — 7pm GMT”, plus a row of social handles (YouTube, Discord, TikTok). That information does not appear on the profile banner — it is unique to the working billboard.

She then builds three panels at 320 px wide and ~120 px tall — “About”, “Schedule”, “Socials” — each under 1 MB, all the same width so the column aligns. Finally she exports an 800 × 800 avatar of her logo mark.

She uploads the profile banner under Settings → Profile, the offline banner and panels under Creator Dashboard → Channel, and the avatar under Settings → Profile. She opens the channel on her phone and on a narrow desktop window: the centred content holds at both extremes. Total time, about an hour, for a channel that reads as a finished brand from the first visit.

The full Twitch channel kit at a glance

It helps to see all the channel image sizes together, because “Twitch banner size” is really shorthand for a small set of assets that work as a system:

Designing these as a coordinated set — one palette, one logo, one typeface — is what makes a channel read as a finished brand the moment a visitor arrives. A mismatched kit (a polished banner but a default avatar, or panels in three different styles) undercuts the impression faster than any single weak asset.

Beyond the banner: overlays and alerts

A frequent point of confusion is the line between uploaded channel images (covered on this page) and stream graphics that live in your broadcasting software. They are different systems with different homes:

• Channel images — the profile banner, offline banner, panels, and avatar — are uploaded to Twitch through Settings and the Creator Dashboard. They are static images at the fixed sizes above, and they appear on your channel page.
• Stream overlays, alerts, and scenes — the webcam frame, the “just followed” pop-ups, the starting-soon screen, the animated borders — are configured inside OBS, Streamlabs, or similar, composited onto your stream at 1920 × 1080 (the standard stream canvas). These are not uploaded to Twitch as images; they are part of your live video output.

So if you want motion behind your stream or animated follower alerts, that is an overlay/alert task in your broadcasting software, not a banner upload. The banner is your channel page’s branding; the overlay is your live broadcast’s branding. New streamers often try to “animate the banner” — the right move is to build a static banner here and handle motion in the overlay layer of OBS. Keeping the two straight saves a lot of wasted effort uploading files to the wrong place.

UK and US notes

Twitch dimensions are global — there is no regional difference in banner sizes. The only locale-sensitive detail is on your offline banner: when you publish a stream schedule, always include a timezone (GMT/BST for UK streamers, ET/PT for US streamers, or use UTC offsets). A schedule that says “7pm” with no timezone is useless to an international audience, and Twitch audiences are global by default. If you stream to both UK and US viewers, listing the time in two zones — “7pm GMT / 2pm ET” — removes the ambiguity.