YouTube channel banner requirements
The published requirements are already set. Add your image and FileBelow makes it match — 16:9 · at least 2048px wide · under 6 MB · JPEG or PNG.
JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, AVIF and BMP. Your file is processed on your device.
The minimum upload dimension is 2048 by 1152 pixels at a 16:9 ratio, and the file must be 6 MB or smaller. YouTube recommends 2560 by 1440 for television displays. Only the central 1235 by 338 pixels is guaranteed visible on every device, so keep text and logos inside that area.
Official source · checked 2026-08-22
The published requirements
| Minimum width | 2048 px |
|---|---|
| Minimum height | 1152 px |
| Aspect ratio | 16:9 |
| Maximum file size | 6 MB |
| Accepted formats | JPEG, PNG |
Read from support.google.com on .
Platforms change their requirements without notice. If this page disagrees with the source, the source is right — please tell us so we can correct it. Changes are recorded in the changelog.
What YouTube channel banner means in practice
The minimum upload dimension is 2048 by 1152 pixels at a 16:9 ratio, and the file must be 6 MB or smaller. YouTube recommends 2560 by 1440 for television displays. Only the central 1235 by 338 pixels is guaranteed visible on every device, so keep text and logos inside that area.
A banner that fails to upload leaves the channel with a blank grey header, and one designed without the safe area in mind gets its text cropped off on phones.
Where this image actually appears
The artwork across the top of a channel page. It is the single most awkward image on the platform because one file is displayed at radically different crops: a wide strip on a television, less on a desktop browser, and only a small central region on a phone.
Preparing one properly
Design outwards from the centre. Everything essential — the channel name, a face, an upload schedule — belongs in the middle region that survives on every device; the outer areas should carry background only. Preview the result on a phone before publishing, because the phone crop is the tightest and the one most viewers see.
The mistake people make
Composing for the desktop view. A banner laid out to look balanced in a browser loses its edges entirely on mobile, which is where the text people put in the corners tends to live.
Meeting the requirements
Choosing YouTube above sets every rule in the table at once, and the result panel reports each one with a pass or a fail rather than leaving you to check. The 16:9 ratio is applied as a centre crop, and you can drag the frame to choose which part survives before anything is processed.
To see what is wrong before changing anything, the YouTube requirement check reports every rule against your file without processing it.
Common questions
- What size should a YouTube channel banner be?
- 16:9 · at least 2048px wide · under 6 MB · JPEG or PNG. Those are the values published by YouTube itself, read from its documentation on 2026-08-22 — the source link is on this page so you can check it. Platforms change requirements without announcing it, so verify before anything important.
- Why does my YouTube banner look cropped on mobile?
- Because it is. One uploaded file is cropped differently for television, desktop and phone, and the phone crop keeps only a central region of it. Anything placed outside that region is not shown to mobile viewers — the fix is compositional, not technical.
- What is the safe area on a YouTube banner?
- The central region that survives every crop. It is considerably smaller than the full image, which is why the image has to be large: the file is sized for the television view, while the part that reliably gets seen is the middle of it.
- Is my image uploaded when I use this page?
- No. The image is opened, measured and processed by your own browser. This site is entirely static and has no server that could receive a file, which you can confirm in your browser’s network tab or by going offline after the page has loaded.