Designed at 112,
read at 28.

An emote is drawn big and read small. You upload a 112 px file to Twitch, but most of chat sees it at 28 px, next to a line of text. This page covers what makes an emote read at that size, what Twitch rejects, and how the rules change for animated emotes, Kick, YouTube member emoji and Discord. Every rule and limit comes from the platforms' own pages, checked on 3 November 2026. Where something is our own advice, we say so.

The upload sizes for every platform are in stream graphic sizes. This guide is about what goes inside them.

Quick reference

Design for 28 px first

Twitch's own tips put it plainly: you only have 28 px to work with, and too much detail or too many words make an emote look messy and hard to understand. Twitch also asks you to view the emote at 100% before you submit, so the lines are sharp and any letters are correct and easy to read.

Our rules for getting there:

1. One idea per emote. One face, one expression or one object. If it takes a sentence to explain, it's two emotes.
2. Push the expression. At 28 px the eyes and mouth do all the work. Make them bigger and stronger than you would on a drawing that's seen full size.
3. Crop tight. The square is small already. Empty space around a character is space its face doesn't get.
4. Use a thick outline, and test it on both chat themes. Chat is dark for some viewers and light for others. A dark outline disappears on dark chat unless there's a lighter edge too.
5. Keep the edges hard. Twitch asks for a fully transparent background and sharp lines, with no unnecessary blurring or feathering. Soft edges leave a grey halo on one of the two themes.
6. Little or no text. One short, bold word at most. Small lettering is the first thing to go.
7. Check it at 28 px while it's still a sketch. Shrink it on screen early, when changing the pose is cheap. Checking only the finished 112 px file is how blobs get made.

YouTube's member emoji show at 24 × 24 points, which is even smaller, so the same rules apply. On Retina and other high-density screens they show at 48 × 48 or more, which is why YouTube prefers a 48 px upload as a minimum.

Auto-resize or three sizes?

Auto-resize takes one square PNG between 112 and 4096 px and makes the smaller sizes for you. Manual mode takes three files, 28, 56 and 112 px, which must be the same image. Design note (ours): if the auto-resized 28 looks muddy, export the three sizes yourself from the large file and clean up the 28 by hand, thickening lines and dropping detail that turns to noise. Twitch's subscriber emote guide says each of the three files must be under 100 KB in manual mode, while its formatting page only gives 1 MB. Stay under 100 KB and both are met.

Design the set, not just the emote

Twitch's advice is to link your emotes by style or colour, or have them all made by the same artist, so the set looks like one brand. Our notes:

• Same outline weight, same colour palette, same character proportions across every emote. A viewer should know whose emote it is before reading the code.
• Base the set on your community. Twitch recommends using memes your own chat created rather than general internet memes, because they last longer and belong to your channel.
• Watch which ones get used. Twitch suggests replacing emotes that are rarely used, and running ideas past your community before you upload.

Partners: plan for modifiers

Partners can offer emote modifiers on Tier 2 and Tier 3 subscriptions. They apply to every emote, and you can't add your own. The choices are Greyscale, Squished, Horizontal Flip, Sunglasses and Think. By default, Tier 2 gets Horizontal Flip, and Tier 3 gets Sunglasses and Think.

Design note (ours): check how an emote survives the two that change it most. Horizontal Flip mirrors any lettering, so a word in the emote reads backwards. Greyscale removes colour, so an emote whose meaning depends on colour (red for angry, green for money) loses it. Twitch also keeps the right to remove an emote and modifier combination it decides is inappropriate.

Animated emotes

• Format: GIF, square. One file between 112 and 4096 px (auto-resize), or three GIFs at 28, 56 and 112 px.
• File size: 1 MB in auto-resize mode, 512 KB per file in manual mode.
• Frames: 60 at most.
• Flashing: no flashing or flickering more than 3 times in one second.
• The still: the first frame of the GIF becomes the thumbnail, unless you upload a custom static image.

The still matters more than it sounds. Viewers can turn emote animations off in chat settings, and Twitch says it's still bringing animation to iOS. Those viewers see the still, so design the first frame (or a custom thumbnail) to read as the emote on its own. A blank first frame or a half-finished pose makes the emote meaningless for them.

Design note (ours): most failed uploads are over the frame or file limit. Cut frames before you cut quality. A short loop with a strong pose at each end reads better at 28 px than a long animation, and it fits the limits.

Easy Animate: if you have a static emote, Twitch can animate it for you with a preset: Shake, Rave, Roll, Spin, Slide In or Slide Out. The upload is a square PNG between 112 and 4096 px, under 1 MB.

Slots: animated emotes have their own slots, which can't hold static emotes. Affiliates start with 5 and can unlock up to 20. Partners can earn up to 60 for Tier 1, plus 5 for Tier 2 and 5 for Tier 3. Both can earn 2 extra Tier 1 slots for 60 days by using Twitch's Alerts on stream.

What Twitch rejects

Most subscriber emotes can be used across all of Twitch, not just your channel, so Twitch reviews them for every viewer. An in-joke that's fine in your chat is judged without that context. Twitch also notes that an emote that's acceptable static may not be acceptable animated.

Beyond the Community Guidelines (hate, harassment, threats, gore, sexual content, nudity and drugs), Twitch's emote guidelines rule out:

• Single letters and characters, such as "L" or "W", even held by a character or shown on a keyboard key. Partners can use letters only when they're a key element of an established logo.
• Politics: political phrases, symbols, flags and figures.
• Copies of Twitch's global emotes, including re-uploads of retired ones such as the original PogChamp. Kappa derivatives are allowed, two per channel at most, and VoHiYo derivatives can't use or appear to use the original assets.
• Vulgarity, including obscene words, gestures, and implied urination and defecation. Gasm-style emotes are allowed, but implied bodily fluids such as saliva can get one denied.
• Underwear, swimwear or exaggerated body parts, and implied nudity, including censor bars and blurs. Non-human cartoon characters with humanized buttocks are denied unless they're covered, and may be denied when animated.
• Photo-realistic injury or blood. Cartoon or slapstick injury and minor blood are allowed.
• Anything you don't have the rights to: another creator's art or assets, characters and images from games, films and TV, someone else's name or logo, or a real person's face, such as a celebrity's.

The name counts too: the guidelines apply to the emote's code as well as its picture.

If an emote is rejected, the email gives a general reason. Change the design and resubmit. Resubmitting the same thing repeatedly can cost you instant upload, the privilege that lets Affiliates and Partners in good standing skip manual review.

Names and prefixes

• Twitch: every code is your channel's prefix plus the emote's name, for example prefix + Love = prefixLove. Partners in good standing can change the prefix once every 60 days.
• YouTube: your first emoji sets a family name of 3 to 10 characters, which members use to autocomplete. Each emoji name is 3 to 10 letters or numbers. To rename one, you delete it and upload it again.
• Kick: the name you give an emote is what viewers type in chat. Kick's help page mentions no prefix and no length rules.
• Discord: names need at least 2 characters, using only letters, numbers and underscores.

Design note (ours): choose names before you draw. A name that's easy to type and guess gets used. One that has to be looked up doesn't.

Taking the same set to Kick, YouTube and Discord

Kick

• The file: one PNG or GIF at 500 × 500 px, under 1 MB. That's the only size Kick asks for.
• Slots: every channel can upload up to 60 emotes. Affiliates and Verified channels can add up to 24 subscriber-only emotes on top.
• Where they work: channel emotes only work in your own chat. Subscriber emotes work in any chat on Kick, for as long as the viewer stays subscribed.

Kick's help centre publishes less than Twitch's. It doesn't say what size emotes show at in chat, it sets no frame or flashing limits for GIFs, and it has no emote-specific rejection list. Our notes for Kick:

• Export at 500 px from your master, never by scaling up a 112 px Twitch export. The upscale is the most common reason emotes look blurry on Kick.
• Check the emote at real size in Kick's own chat, because Kick doesn't publish the size. Every rule in Design for 28 px first still applies.
• Hold animated GIFs to Twitch's limits anyway: a short loop, a first frame that reads on its own, and no more than 3 flashes a second. A set that meets Twitch's rules works on both platforms, and the flashing limit protects viewers whatever the platform.
• Subscriber emotes travel, just like Twitch's. Viewers use them in other channels' chats, so an in-joke gets seen without its context.

YouTube and Discord

• YouTube members: every member gets every emoji, whatever their level. You start with 4 emoji slots and unlock more as members join, up to 54 at 5,000 members or more. YouTube doesn't tell you when a new slot opens. GIFs are shown as stills.
• YouTube badges: they render at 14 px in comments and 16 px in live chat, smaller than a Twitch emote. A loyalty badge needs to be one simple shape.
• Discord: a server can hold 50 custom emoji, each under 256 KB. Twitch subscriber emotes can sync to a streamer's Discord server, but animated ones arrive as stills. Upload the GIF to the server yourself to keep it moving.

Design note (ours): export each platform's file from your large, layered master, not from another platform's export. Scaling a 112 px Twitch file up is how emotes go blurry on YouTube and Discord.

Where emotes usually go wrong

1. Too much detail. It looked great at 112 px and turned into a blob at 28.
2. A sentence in the emote. The words can't be read in chat.
3. An outline that only works on one theme. It disappears on dark chat or light chat.
4. Soft, feathered edges. They leave a halo, and Twitch asks for sharp lines.
5. A blank first frame on an animated emote. Viewers with animation off, or on iOS, see nothing useful.
6. A single letter, like "W" or "L". Twitch rejects it unless you're a Partner and it's part of your logo.
7. A game character, a celebrity's face or another creator's art. It's rejected or taken down unless you have the rights.
8. Lettering on a Partner emote with Horizontal Flip. It reads backwards for Tier 2 subscribers.
9. Scaling the Twitch export up for Kick. A 112 px file stretched to 500 px is blurry. Export it again from the master.

A checklist you can copy

1. One idea per emote, with a pushed expression and a tight crop.
2. Thick outline that works on dark and light chat.
3. Hard edges and a fully transparent background.
4. Checked at 28 px (24 for YouTube) while it's still a sketch.
5. Same outline weight, palette and proportions across the set.
6. Animated: under 60 frames, the size limit met, no more than 3 flashes a second, and a first frame that reads on its own.
7. Nothing on Twitch's rejection list, in the picture or the name.
8. Each platform's file exported from the master.

Sources

Each rule above comes from the platform's own pages, checked 3 November 2026:

• Twitch: Emote Formatting & Instant Emote Upload Requirements
• Twitch: Emote Guidelines
• Twitch: Subscriber Emote Guide
• Twitch: Animated Emotes
• Twitch: Modified Emotes
• Kick: How to add or edit KICK emotes
• YouTube Help: Create or manage your channel's memberships levels & perks
• Discord: How to Add Custom Emojis on Discord

Need emotes for your channel? We draw emote and badge sets built to read at chat size.