How to Set Up Your Twitch Channel Description and Banners: Sizes and Panels

To set up a Twitch channel you need five images and one text: a square avatar (at least 256×256, ideally 800×800), a 1200×480 profile banner, a 1920×1080 offline banner for the player, About panels 320 px wide, and a channel bio of up to 300 characters. The avatar and banners are uploaded in the Creator Dashboard: Settings → Channel → Brand tab. Panels are edited right on your channel page, on the About tab. Below you will find a size table that flags where sources disagree, a starter set of panels, and the mistakes that make your setup hard to read on a phone.

Sizes and formats: summary table

At the time of checking (October 2026) the official help.twitch.tv page did not return its text, so the numbers were cross-checked against recent guides from Streamlabs, Elgato, Nerd or Die and OWN3D. Where they disagree, the table says so.

Element	Size	Format and weight	Where sources disagree
Avatar	Square, minimum 256×256, 800×800 recommended	JPEG or PNG, up to 10 MB	Older guides say 200–256 px, while Streamlabs recommends 800×800 in 2025
Profile banner	1200×480	JPEG or PNG, up to 10 MB	OWN3D (2020) gave 1200×380 and 3 MB, and Nerd or Die writes 1280×480 in its text
Offline banner (Video Player Banner)	1920×1080 (16:9)	JPEG or PNG, up to 10 MB	Sources agree. According to Elgato, a GIF shows only its first frame
About panel	Width 320, any height	JPG or PNG, up to 2.9 MB	The maximum height is not officially published: you will see 160, 300 and up to 600 px
Emotes	One file of 112–4096 px, or three: 28, 56, 112	PNG or GIF, up to 1 MB	For animated emotes uploaded manually, a 512 KB limit is mentioned
Subscriber badges	18×18, 36×36, 72×72	PNG, up to 25 KB	Sources agree

If an image will not upload, check the file size first and then the format. Going over the size limit is the most common reason an upload silently fails.

Avatar: the small circle people see everywhere

Your avatar appears in recommendations, in chat for your moderators, in search and in go-live notifications. Twitch crops it to a circle, so keep everything important in the center, with a margin of about a tenth of the side from the edges. Draw at 800×800, then shrink the preview to the size of a fingernail: if the face or logo is still recognizable, the avatar is done.

A large face, a simple character silhouette or a single letter on a contrasting background work best. Text on an avatar is almost always a mistake: you cannot read it in a tiny circle. If you stream without a camera and are thinking about a virtual look, you can make the avatar from your own model. We wrote about how to build one for free in the article how to become a VTuber for free.

People often mix them up, although they are two different places on the page.

A wide strip at the top of your channel, visible when you are not live and a viewer opens your profile. The size is 1200×480. Different devices display it differently: on a wide monitor the image stretches, while on a phone the edges and the bottom can disappear under the avatar and buttons. So put the channel name, schedule or slogan in the central third and leave background at the edges that you can afford to lose.

The picture inside the player while there is no broadcast. The size is 1920×1080, the same as a stream frame. This is the place for what a viewer should grasp in a second: “Currently offline”, stream days and times, your Telegram or Discord handle. Instead of a static banner, Twitch lets you show a channel trailer, a short video about what you do. If you have no trailer, be sure to set a banner: an empty gray player looks like an abandoned channel.

Where to upload everything in 2026

Appearance settings live in the Creator Dashboard. Menu item names may be translated in your interface language, but the structure is the same.

Click your avatar in the top right corner of twitch.tv and choose Creator Dashboard.
In the left menu open Settings → Channel.
Go to the Brand tab. This is where you upload the avatar, profile banner and video player banner, and choose the accent color and the channel trailer.
The channel description (Bio) and social links are filled in under About, which, according to Streamlabs, is the same place as the name and display name.
Panels under the stream are edited on the channel page itself: open the About tab, switch on Edit Panels and click the plus.

Twitch moves menu items around from time to time. If a section is not where it should be, look for the Brand tab in the channel settings: it moves least often.

About panels: which ones a beginner needs

A panel is a block under the player: a header image, text and a link. The width is fixed at 320 px, and you pick the height yourself. A handy starting scheme is a narrow 320×80–100 header with the section name and plain text beneath it. Twitch renders panel text itself and it stays readable on any screen, which cannot be said of lettering baked into an image.

Five panels to start with:

Schedule. Days and times with a time zone: “Mon, Wed, Fri at 7 PM Moscow time”. Duplicate it in Twitch’s built-in schedule: viewers will see the next stream and be able to set a reminder.
Chat rules. Three to five short points: no spam, no spoilers, no insults, links only with a moderator’s permission. Nobody reads a long legal code.
Hardware and software. Processor, graphics card, microphone, camera, streaming software. This is the most common question in chat, and the panel saves you an hour of answers a week.
Donations and support. A link to your donation service and a couple of words on what the money goes toward. If you are already an Affiliate, remind people about subscriptions and Bits: the program terms are covered in our article on the Twitch Affiliate.
Socials. Telegram channel, Discord server, a YouTube channel with highlights, VK. Keep two or three platforms where you actually post something.

Later you can add an “About me” panel with a short story, “Bot commands” and “Collaboration” with an email for advertisers. Eight to ten panels is a sensible ceiling: beyond that, viewers simply do not scroll.

The panel title length is limited: third-party guides cite 50 characters, but the figure is not officially published. Write titles in one or two words so they are visible at a glance.

Channel description: 300 characters for what matters

The Bio field holds 300 characters. That is roughly two short paragraphs, visible on the channel card and on the About tab. A description should answer three questions: who you are, what you stream and when.

A simple formula: game or genre + what makes your stream different + schedule + call to action. For example: “I play horror games blind and get honestly scared. Streams on Tuesdays and Fridays from 8 PM Moscow time. Come laugh with us: chat decides where we go.” Compare that with “Hi everyone, I am a streamer, subscribe”: the second one says nothing about the channel.

Keywords matter too: the game title, the genre, the language of the stream. People search for channels by them, and “I stream in Russian” filters out those expecting English. Do not put links or long lists here: that is what panels are for.

Emotes and badges: in brief

Custom emotes are available to Affiliates and Partners: these are subscriber slots, up to five follower emotes, and Bits emotes. You upload them in the Creator Dashboard, in the viewer rewards section. You can upload one square file from 112 to 4096 px, and Twitch will cut out 28, 56 and 112 itself, or upload three ready-made sizes manually, PNG or GIF up to 1 MB. Draw with 28 px in mind: thin lines and small details vanish there. Subscriber badges are 18, 36 and 72 px, PNG up to 25 KB. For what popular emotes mean and how 7TV and BTTV work, read our breakdown of Twitch emotes.

Free tools

Tool	What it does	Notes
Canva	Ready-made Twitch banner and panel templates, drag-and-drop elements	Closed access to users from Russia on June 1, 2022; it works in other CIS countries
Photopea	A browser-based online editor that opens and saves PSD	Free, no installation; good for ready-made PSD templates
GIMP, Krita	Full-featured desktop editors	Free and work offline, but take time to learn

The fastest route is a free PSD template for panels or banners. Overlay shops and designers post them on themed sites. Download a template, open it in Photopea, change the text and colors, and save as PNG. Check the license first: some templates are allowed only for personal, non-commercial use.

Keep a consistent style: two or three colors, one font for headings and one for body text. Set the accent color on the Brand tab to match the banner so the channel page looks cohesive.

Common mistakes

Tiny text on images. Many viewers open a channel on a phone, where the profile banner shrinks into a narrow strip and panels take up the full width of a small screen. There is no official minimum font size, but in practice lettering smaller than 40–50 px on a 1200×480 canvas turns into noise on a phone. Check every image on your phone before you call the work finished.
Text inside a panel image. A schedule drawn into a PNG cannot be read by search, cannot be enlarged on a phone, and has to be redrawn every time a stream is moved. Plain text under the header is fixed in a minute.
Important things at the banner edges. A name or schedule right at the edge gets cropped on some screens and can hide under the avatar and buttons.
Heavy files. A 5 MB panel simply will not upload: the limit is 2.9 MB. If a file is heavy, save it as JPG at 80–90% quality or compress the PNG.
Clashing styles. An anime-style avatar, a photo banner and panels from three different sets look like three different channels.
Outdated information. A schedule you stopped following long ago, dead links and old hardware in a panel erode trust more than an empty panel.
Other people’s art without permission. Pictures from search results and characters from other franchises in your channel header are grounds for a rights holder complaint. Use your own images, templates with a clear license, or a designer’s work by agreement.

Your setup helps keep the person who has already come in, but first you have to bring the viewer. A new channel with zero viewers rarely makes it into recommendations, so many start with a little support: they put together a plan in the viewer management panel or add Twitch followers so that a neat channel does not look empty. The other services for this platform are collected in the Twitch section.

Frequently asked questions

Go with 1200×480: it is named in current guides from Streamlabs, Elgato and Nerd or Die. The 1200×380 variant appears in old guides, around 2020, and now produces bars or cropping.

JPEG and PNG work reliably. According to Elgato, a GIF in the offline banner shows only its first frame. Animation on a channel is possible through emotes and through a trailer instead of the offline banner.

How tall should panels be?

The width is always 320 px, and Twitch does not officially publish a maximum height. In practice headers are 80–100 px, and image panels with text go up to 300–600 px. The taller the panel, the worse it reads on a phone.

Why can’t I see the button to upload my own emotes?

Custom emotes, including follower emotes, unlock only after you get Affiliate or Partner status. Until then the upload section in the Creator Dashboard is unavailable.

How many characters can I write in the channel description?

Up to 300 characters. That is enough to name the game or genre, give your schedule and briefly say how your stream differs from the rest.

Do I need to pay a designer for the setup?

Not to start. A free template and an editor like Photopea are enough for an avatar, banners and five panels in an evening. A designer makes sense once you have settled on a style and want unique emotes and overlays.

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