Minecraft server icon size: 64x64 pixels
The Minecraft server icon size is 64 by 64 pixels exactly, and the server checks both sides when it starts. An icon of 63, 65 or 128 pixels is not scaled or cropped to fit: the server skips it, writes Couldn't load server icon in its log and sends players no icon at all.
The file has to be a real PNG as well. Minecraft's own server reads the first bytes of the file, and a JPEG, WebP or GIF with a .png name fails that test, however normal it looks in an image viewer. Transparency is allowed: see-through pixels let the background of the server list show through, and the game has drawn them correctly since Java 1.8.
Keep the file small, too. The server sends it unchanged, as base64 text inside its answer to every ping, and Minecraft caps that answer at 32,767 characters, which leaves room for a PNG of about 24 KB. A normal 64 by 64 icon stays far below that. Only a file that carries extra data, such as a large colour profile from a photo editor, gets near it, and on a vanilla server that breaks the answer to every ping.
How to make a Minecraft server icon
To make a Minecraft server icon, you need 1 square picture and an image editor that can scale it and export PNG files, such as GIMP, which is free. These 5 steps work for a logo, a block or a screenshot:
- Pick a picture with 1 clear subject. A face, a block or a single letter still reads at 64 pixels; a wide landscape or a line of text turns into a blur.
- Cut it square. Scaling a rectangle to 64 by 64 squashes it, so crop the part you want first.
- Scale it to 64 by 64. In GIMP that is Image, Scale Image. For pixel art, set Interpolation to None so every pixel stays crisp; for a photo or a screenshot, a smooth setting such as Cubic looks better.
- Export it as PNG, with File, Export As in GIMP. Saving a JPEG under a new name does not turn it into a PNG.
- Name it server-icon.png in small letters, and check the size the editor shows once more before you upload it.
A screenshot of your own world makes a fitting icon. Press F1 to hide the hotbar, then F2 to take the picture, which the game saves in the screenshots folder of your .minecraft folder.
Or let the game do the cropping. A singleplayer world you have played has an icon.png in its folder under saves: the 64 by 64 thumbnail the game takes for your world list, soon after you first enter the world. Copy that file, rename it server-icon.png, and the server list shows the same view.
Minecraft server icon location: where server-icon.png goes
The Minecraft server icon location is 1 fixed spot: the server's main folder, as server-icon.png next to server.properties. Not the world folder, not the plugins or mods folder and not a folder of its own. Hosted servers usually run on Linux, where Server-Icon.png and server-icon.png are two different files, so use small letters only.
Windows hides known file extensions by default, so a file that shows as server-icon.png on your PC may really be called server-icon.png.png. Turn on file name extensions in the View menu of File Explorer before you upload it.
When the main folder has no server-icon.png, the server tries a second file: icon.png in the world folder, the thumbnail from singleplayer. So after you upload a world from your own game, the list may show a small picture of it without you adding anything. A server-icon.png in the main folder always comes first, and the server only looks for either file when it starts.
How to change the Minecraft server icon
To change the Minecraft server icon, you replace 1 file: upload the new server-icon.png over the old one, restart the server and click Refresh in the multiplayer list. Uploading by hand works at any host that gives you the files, through the file manager in the panel or over SFTP. The three hosts we compare also take the icon in their own panels, each in its own place:
- Astroworld Hosting keeps everything players see in their list in the General group of the server settings: the icon, and the message of the day with a live preview of its two lines. The panel checks that the icon is a PNG of 64 by 64 pixels and no more than 256 KB before it saves it, and the icon shows after the next restart.
- Lodehost has a Server icon card on its Settings tab. It takes a 64 by 64 PNG of up to 256 KB, makes sure the file really is a PNG and stores it under the right name for you. A switch called Answer server-list pings, in the Advanced group of the same tab, has to stay on, or the server looks unreachable in every list.
- Cheapest Minecraft Hosting puts it under Server identity in Settings: find Server icon, click Upload PNG, pick the file, which may be up to 256 KB, and restart. Its guide also walks through the manual route, in Files, to the top folder of the server.
How to change the server name in the Minecraft server list
You cannot change the server name in the Minecraft server list from your server, because every player types that name in 1 field, Server Name, when they add your server, and their game saves it with the address. Two players can have the same server under two different names.
What you do control is the rest of the entry: the icon on the left, and the message of the day under the name, which is the motd line in server.properties. Put the name you want people to remember at the start of that message. Our guide to Minecraft server properties has the colour codes and the length that still fits.
Minecraft server icon not showing: fixes
When a Minecraft server icon is not showing, 1 of these 8 causes is usually behind it. Look in the server log first: Minecraft's own server writes Couldn't load server icon when it rejects the file, and the line after it says why.
| What you see | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Couldn't load server icon, then Bad PNG Signature | The file is a JPEG, WebP or GIF with a .png name | Open it in an image editor and export it as PNG |
| Couldn't load server icon, then Invalid world icon size [128, 128], but expected [64, 64] | The picture is not 64 by 64; the first 2 numbers are its real size | Scale it to 64 by 64 and upload it again |
| No icon, and nothing about it in the log | The server did not find the file: a capital letter, a hidden second .png or the wrong folder | Show file extensions, fix the name and move the file next to server.properties |
| The old icon after you uploaded a new one | The server reads the icon only when it starts | Restart the server |
| Still the old icon after the restart | Each player's game shows the icon it saved at its last ping, in servers.dat | Click Refresh in the multiplayer list |
| A small picture of your world | There is no server-icon.png, so the server uses icon.png from the world folder | Add your own server-icon.png, or keep the thumbnail if you like it |
| The server looks offline, but players can join | enable-status=false in server.properties, which hides the icon and the MOTD too | Set enable-status=true and restart |
| On a network, the proxy's icon instead of the server's | Velocity answers the server list itself | Put the icon in the proxy's folder, or pass it on with ping passthrough |
When the whole entry says the server cannot be reached, the icon is not the cause. Start with our checklist for when you can't connect to a Minecraft server instead.
Minecraft server icon on a Velocity network
On a Velocity network, the Minecraft server icon players see comes from 1 file: server-icon.png in the proxy's own folder, because the proxy, not the servers behind it, answers the server list. The icons of your lobby and game servers stay unused unless you pass them on.
Velocity reads the file when it starts and again on velocity reload, and it checks that the image is 64 by 64. It is less strict about the format than Minecraft's own server: it also opens a JPEG or a GIF and converts it to PNG before it sends it. When it cannot use the file, the proxy logs Unable to load your server-icon.png, continuing without it.
Since Velocity 4.2.0, released on 14 September 2026, velocity.toml has a [ping-passthrough] section with 5 switches: version, players, description, favicon and modinfo. With favicon = true, the proxy shows the icon of the first server in its try list that answers, instead of its own. A player who connects through a forced host gets the icon of that host's server, so one network can show a different icon for each address. Older Velocity versions had a single ping-passthrough setting, where all passed the icon on and description kept the proxy's. Our page on Velocity server hosting covers the rest of the proxy.
Can a Minecraft server icon be a GIF?
No, a Minecraft server icon cannot be a GIF or move in any way: the server list shows 1 still PNG for each server. Minecraft's own server rejects a GIF outright, and Velocity, which can open one, turns it into a still PNG of its first frame.
What you can do is change the icon between refreshes. MiniMOTD 2.2.5, from 18 September 2026, runs on Paper, Folia, Velocity, Waterfall, Sponge, NeoForge and Fabric, and can pick an icon from a folder of its own each time the server is pinged:
- Install it and start the server once, so it creates its folder with main.conf and an icons folder inside.
- Put your icons in the icons folder, each a 64 by 64 PNG under any name. It skips other sizes and logs
image must be 64x64pxfor each one. - Give each message an icon in main.conf:
randomfor a new pick on every ping, or a file name without .png for a fixed one.
icon-enabled=true
motds=[
{
icon=random
line1="<gold><bold>Oakvale SMP"
line2="<gray>survival, no resets"
}
]With more than one entry under motds, MiniMOTD also picks one of them at random on every refresh, so the message and its icon change together, and its message takes the place of the motd from server.properties.
Minecraft Bedrock server icon
A Minecraft Bedrock server has no icon to set, because its answer to a ping is 1 line of text: fields split by semicolons, from the edition and the message to the player counts and the ports, and none of them holds a picture. Bedrock Dedicated Server has no server-icon.png, and a server that players add by hand gets no picture of its own in their list.
What Bedrock players read there is the message, which on Bedrock Dedicated Server comes from server-name in its server.properties. On a crossplay server with Geyser, they see your Java MOTD instead: passthrough-motd in Geyser's config is on by default, and Geyser asks the Java server for the message every 3 seconds. With it off, Bedrock players see Geyser's own 2 lines, Geyser and Another Geyser server. Java players on the same server see the icon; Bedrock players never do. Our page on Minecraft crossplay hosting explains the rest of Geyser.