Twitch Emote and Badge Sizes: The Spec Sheet, and How to Design for 28 Pixels
Every size, format and limit Twitch asks for — emotes, sub badges and channel point icons — plus the design rules that decide whether your art still reads at 28 pixels.
Emotes and badges are the smallest art on your channel and the fussiest to upload. Twitch wants three sizes of everything, specific formats, and it rejects files without telling you much. Here is the whole spec in one place, plus the design rules that decide whether an emote reads at 28 pixels or turns into a smudge.
Emote sizes
Every emote needs three square sizes:
| 112 × 112 | Large — emote picker, hover preview |
| 56 × 56 | Medium — bigger displays and some layouts |
| 28 × 28 | Small — how chat actually shows it most of the time |
Format: PNG with a transparent background for static emotes. Twitch can auto-resize a single square upload down to all three, but the automatic 28×28 is rarely as clean as one you prepare yourself — thin lines and small details survive better when a human decides what to drop.
Weight: keep a single auto-resized upload under 1 MB. If you upload the three sizes separately, aim well below that — around 100 KB each is a comfortable ceiling for static PNGs.
Animated emotes
Animated emotes are GIF, in the same three sizes, and they are available to Affiliates and Partners rather than every channel.
- Maximum 60 frames.
- Nothing may flash more than three times per second — this is an accessibility rule, not a suggestion, and it is a common rejection reason.
- Keep the files light: under 1 MB for an auto-resized upload, and roughly half that per file when you upload the sizes manually.
A practical note: at 28 pixels, animation reads as movement, not as detail. Loops that change silhouette — a bounce, a spin, a wobble — work. Loops that change fine detail inside a static shape are invisible.
Sub badges and channel point icons
| Sub badges | 72 × 72, 36 × 36 and 18 × 18 · PNG · static only |
| Channel point icons | 112 × 112, 56 × 56 and 28 × 28 · PNG · keep them small, around 25 KB |
Badges are brutal. Eighteen pixels is roughly the size of a letter in this sentence. Anything with more than one shape and two colours collapses into a dot. The badges that work are a single silhouette with a thick outline — a cup, a paw, a star, a crown — and a colour that changes per tier.
Note that cheermotes (bit emotes) are animated GIF and a Partner-only feature, so most channels never deal with them.
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Design rules that decide if it reads at 28 pixels
- Design at the small size, not the big one. Draw at 112 but check at 28 constantly. Everything looks good at 112.
- One idea per emote. A face, a gesture, an object. Not a character holding an object in a scene.
- Silhouette first. Fill the shape black. If you cannot tell what it is, neither can chat.
- Thick outline. It separates the emote from both light and dark chat backgrounds. Chat has two themes and you do not control which one a viewer uses.
- High contrast inside. Two or three strong colours beat a subtle gradient every time.
- Fill the canvas. Trim empty space — padding you leave is size you lose.
- Avoid text. Short words sometimes survive at 112 and never at 28. If the joke needs a word, make the word the whole emote.
What a starter set looks like
You do not need twenty emotes. You need the handful chat will actually type:
- A positive reaction — love, hype, applause.
- A negative or awkward one — cringe, facepalm, side-eye.
- A laugh.
- Your mascot or face doing something recognisable.
- One in-joke from your own community — this is the one that gets used most.
Badges follow the tiers: one design per tier, same silhouette, different colour or detail so viewers can read progression at a glance.
Uploading them
- Open your Creator Dashboard, then the emotes section under Viewer Rewards.
- Upload per tier — Tier 1, 2 and 3 have separate slots, and the number of slots depends on your sub count.
- Upload either one square source for auto-resize, or the three sizes yourself. For anything with fine lines, do it yourself.
- Submit and wait. Emotes go through review, and it is not instant.
- Badges live in the same area under their own tab, uploaded at all three sizes.
If an upload is rejected, the usual causes are transparency missing, the file over the limit, an animation that flashes too fast, or content that breaks the guidelines — real-life people, offensive gestures, other brands' logos.
Do these also work on Discord and YouTube?
Mostly yes, with different numbers. Discord takes PNG or GIF and resizes them for you — a 112×112 emote uploads fine, though Discord has its own file size limit. YouTube membership perks use their own sizes, so check before you reuse. The useful habit is keeping your source files at a larger square size, so any platform's spec is one export away.
Once your emotes and badges match the rest of your channel — the same palette as your overlay and panels — the whole page starts looking deliberate. Our guide to setting up your channel page covers the rest of that picture.