Why your Twitch emote was rejected

There are two failure modes, and they are almost never the same problem. A spec rejection is mechanical and fixable in minutes. A content rejection is a judgement call about what the image shows.

Working out which one you have is the first step.

Spec failures

• Not square. Twitch requires 1:1 at every size.
• Wrong dimensions. 112, 56 and 28 exactly — not "roughly".
• Over the byte cap. 1 MB per file for emotes, 25 KB for sub badges.
• Opaque background. A "transparent" PNG that is really a painted checkerboard fails, and generated art does this constantly.
• Wrong format. PNG or GIF; a WebP or JPEG renamed to .png will not pass.

Export exact sizesFix a fake transparent background

Content failures

Content review is about what the image shows, not how it was made. The recurring categories are hateful imagery, sexual content, violence or gore, third-party trademarks and real people's likeness.

The trap for AI-generated sets is the last two. Models have absorbed a great deal of copyrighted character design and celebrity imagery, and will happily reproduce something close to it when prompted. "Make it look like that famous meme character" is the shortest path to a rejection.

• Avoid prompting for named characters, franchises or real people.
• Check a generated result against characters you recognise before uploading.
• Text in an emote that spells a slur or slur-adjacent joke also fails content review, even if the artwork is fine.

What actually helps

For spec failures, re-export properly and resubmit — it is a minutes-long fix. For content failures, changing the file will not help; the design has to change.

If an emote was rejected and you genuinely cannot see why, resubmitting the identical file rarely helps. Change something substantive, or ask in the Twitch creator community, where this comes up often.

Questions