Podcasts are all about storytelling and information being shared as audio or video, but many people will encounter your show for the first time with your podcast cover art. And with around 4.5 million podcasts out there in the world, you need to make a good impression at first glance. But how can you design your podcast cover art to stand out in 2026?Â
As experts in podcast services, including development and production, The Podglomerate has put together a guide to help you create podcast cover art that stays true to your brand while also capturing attention across multiple platforms.
In this article, we’ll cover all the essentials for creating podcast cover art, including understanding your audience persona, developing a brand identity, and optimizing your imagery for podcast apps. If you want support to launch your podcast and maximize your audience growth, schedule a free consultation with our team.
Why is podcast cover art important?
When podcasts first came onto the media scene, cover art was just a simple square image on a website or on iTunes. But now that there are millions of podcasts available across a number of different apps, the importance and prominence of cover art has changed. YouTube Podcasts is becoming a major hub for discovery, listening, and viewing. With Instagram and TikTok, there’s short-form vertical video. Don’t forget other devices too, like smart televisions, automobile displays, and of course…AI recommendations.
To break through, you literally have to think outside the box of how podcast cover art once functioned. In 2026, it has to serve as the visual anchor for a podcast’s entire presence across multiple platforms, being able to be recognized whether it’s one inch in size or recognizable from ten feet away on a television or smart device display.
If you are creating a branded podcast, you also want to consider whether you want the cover art to align or differentiate from your main brand. Talk to your marketing team about the pros and cons of your podcast being directly associated with your company’s central offerings. Our award-winning show Podcast Perspectives aligns closely with our branding but retains its own identity.
Now that you know why your cover art is so important, let’s go a bit deeper and examine some current visual design trends you can take advantage of for your podcast cover art.
What are some current visual design trends for podcast cover art?
One reason to look at visual design trends when it comes to podcast cover art is so you can make sure that your show’s brand is up-to-date, fresh, and relevant to current audience expectations. That means looking at elements like typography, logos, color palettes, and layout conventions to make sure your cover art is resonating with listeners and helping it stand out in podcast directories and platforms.
Here are a few websites that you can use for inspiration as you consider your podcast cover art design:
- Canva Design Trends 2026: Canva’s 2026 Design Trends report focuses on a mix of design trends across digital and physical, highlighting insights like human-centric aesthetics, “messy” layouts, and other ideas.
- Design trends for 2026: Adobe created a number of industry-standard tools used by designers, so their trend report comes from a well-known place of expertise. This report also provides some great visual examples that you can examine inside of their tools, so you can really see the trends in action and how to recreate them.
- LogoLounge’s Trend Report: LogoLounge’s archive of annual logo design trends go back to 2003, which can give you insight into the evolving aesthetic shifts in the design industry. Also, if your podcast is set around a specific time period, this report can help you nail that historic look.
- Top 10 graphic design trends 2026: This blog post from VistaPrint, which is mostly focused around consumer packaged goods, also gives you a good look at the types of trends that resonate with people in a tactile fashion. This can be great for any merch which features your podcast art, like t-shirts, mugs, or stickers.
As you look through these trend reports, you’ll start to find a few areas of overlap, such as vibrant, high-energy colors, odd typography, and design that’s rooted in humanity and culture. Every podcast is different, so take some time and find the sweet spot that makes the most sense for your brand and your audience visually. While you’re at it, check out our roster of shows to see examples of podcast cover art that we have created for various clients as part of our podcast production and podcast growth services.
Once you’ve got a few great concepts in mind for your podcast cover art, let’s see what design tools are out there to turn those ideas into reality.sign or tone changes to help you better target the right people.
What tools can I use to design and preview my podcasts cover art?
If you opt to design your podcast cover art yourself, you’re in luck, because there are a plethora of tools available regardless of your design ability. Here are a few of our design tool recommendations to make things a bit easier.
- Adobe Firefly: This free web app uses generative AI to create images based on a text prompt. You can also choose the aspect ratio for the image, the generative model that the tool uses, and include up to four reference images to fine-tune the result.
- Adobe Photoshop: This is the OG of design tools, and the latest updates include generative AI features to help you get closer to your design idea. It doesn’t have the easiest learning curve, but it’s also the premier design tool used by a lot of graphic designers.
- Affinity: Affinity is a new free app from Canva that shares a lot of similarities with Photoshop in terms of features and its user interface. If you’re familiar with Adobe Apps, Affinity combines features from Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign in one convenient program.
- Canva: Canva is another free app where you can create graphics using dozens of built-in templates and other assets. They even have specific templates for podcast cover art and video thumbnails.
When it comes to testing your podcast cover art, Podcast Cover Art Size Preview is a handy tool to get a sense of how it will look across other platforms in context with other podcasts. This can also be helpful if you’re sharing your podcast cover art with people for review or to show your audience how they can discover your show.
Now that you have the tools at hand to design and preview your podcast cover art, let’s look at how to prepare it for use across several platforms.
How do I display my podcast cover art across multiple platforms?
Your podcast cover art design might be nice to look at, but have you considered the technical requirements for how it will appear on various platforms? Let’s break it down.
Like we talked about earlier, your podcast cover art is more than a single square graphic. It’s a brand asset that exists across what we call the “three canvas reality”.
The three canvas reality means that design assets should be created for three distinct aspect ratios:
- Square (1:1): This aspect ratio is your classic directory icon where the height and width of the image are the same. You’ll see this on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and on podcast apps like Pocket Casts.
- Portrait (9:16): This aspect ratio is for vertical video platforms, including TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Spotify Canvas, or Instagram Reels.
- Landscape (16:9): This aspect ratio is for most other video distribution platforms – YouTube, Wistia, Spotify, etc.
The three canvas reality covers a majority of podcasting platforms and ensures that your podcast cover art will be displayed properly without issues.
Podcast Hosting Platforms
While it might be tempting to add lots of text to your podcast cover art to convey your theme or subject matter, it is more effective to express these messages visually. Keeping your text minimalistic will take your podcast cover from content to branding. Trust us, there is a difference.
You will have plenty of time to experiment with textual effects on your social media channels. For artwork that will be discoverable in podcast directories, stick to your podcast’s name, its hosts, and any brand that might be associated with the show.
Dark Mode
Something that is often overlooked in podcast cover art design is the ubiquity of “dark mode”, when people turn their phone or laptop background from white to black. Test your design against both backgrounds to ensure that it remains visually pleasing and impactful in both modes.
Meeting Podcast Platform Requirements
Your design might be nice to look at, but have you considered the technical requirements for your podcast cover art on various platforms? These include cover art size, resolution, and file type. Don’t worry, we’ll break it down for you.
Podcast Hosting Platforms
Your podcast hosting platform will allow you to upload your cover art as a universal asset across all major podcast apps, such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts, via your RSS feed. But while you don’t need to upload your artwork individually to each platform, you need to consider their requirements.
Apple Podcasts Cover Art Requirements
- File format: JPG or PNG
- Aspect ratio: Square (1:1)
- Dimension: 1400×1400 to 3000×3000 pixels, height and width
- Resolution: 72 dpi
- Color space: RGB
Additional guidelines:
- Podcast cover art can be uploaded on the show level, the episode level, and the chapter level, giving you a lot of flexibility with branding your podcast.
- Apple Podcasts for Creators artwork guide and artwork policies gives more information around designing effective imagery for their platform, including downloadable templates.
Spotify Cover Art Requirements
- File format: TIFF, PNG, or JPG
- Aspect ratio: Square (1:1)
- Dimension: between 640px – 10000px, height and width
- Resolution: 300 dpi
- Color space: sRGB
Additional guidelines:
- The Spotify for Creators Optimization Playbook is a comprehensive look at publishing your podcast to their platform.
- Spotify doesn’t support embedded color profiles and orientation metadata, so the podcast cover art should be encoded with an sRGB color space, 24 bits per pixel, with color profiles applied directly.
- Make sure that your podcast cover art is designed at as high a resolution as possible, and scale it down as necessary. Don’t upscale a smaller image to a larger size.
YouTube Podcast Cover Art Requirements
- File format: JPG, PNG, GIF
- Aspect ratio: Square (1:1)
- Dimension: 1280 x 1280
- File size: Under 10 MB
- Color space: RGB
YouTube Thumbnail Requirements
- File format: JPG, PNG, GIF
- Aspect ratio: Landscape (16:9)
- Dimension: For Landscape, 1280 x 720 pixels (with minimum width of 640 pixels)
- File size: Under 2 MB
- Color space: RGB
Our client Climate Rising (produced by Harvard Business School) is a great example of what to consider when making podcast cover artwork for a video-focused YouTube audience.
Additional guidelines:
- Google’s video thumbnails support page offers more information about making sure your assets work best on their platform.
- For podcast playlists, upload a thumbnail with an aspect ratio of 1:1 instead of 16:9 (1280 x 1280 pixels).
- Vertical videos with 16:9 custom thumbnails will be replaced by an auto-generated 4:5 thumbnail on the home, explore, and subscription pages. Your custom thumbnail will still appear on the watch feed, watch history, and non-mobile platforms.
As you can see, the variety of requirements across platforms shows why the three canvas reality is important when it comes to thinking about your podcast cover art. Following these guidelines means you’ll have an entire modular brand system that ensures your podcast cover art looks professional no matter where your audience finds it.
Podcast cover art has come a long way since the early days of podcasting. In 2026, having effective podcast cover art means making sure it exists among a number of different platforms. Using current visual design trends, modern design tools, and following some basic platform guidelines, you can create podcast cover art that captivates your audience and represents your show wherever people discover it.
Have questions? Interested in having The Podglomerate help you with your show’s cover art or other aspects of your podcast development? Learn more about our podcast production capabilities, or email us to learn more about our services.
