Cover image

The cover image appears on your public event page, in embeds, and on attendee portal cards. Upload it from the Portal tab. A separate hero section background image — set from the Website tab — overrides it on the microsite.

Updated May 26, 2026

Each event has a cover image — a single image that represents the event across the public page, embeds, and the attendee portal. It is stored in one field (cover_image_url) and uploaded from the Portal tab.

Where to upload

Open your event and go to the Portal tab (/{slug}?tab=portal). The cover image upload control is at the top of the page. The image saves as soon as the upload completes — there is no separate Save button.

Upload dimensions: maximum 1600 px on either side, wide (landscape) aspect ratio. A 16:9 or similar landscape crop gives the best results across all surfaces where the image appears.

Cover images are not run through automatic optimization — Vercel Image CDN is not applied. Compress and resize your image to the target dimensions before uploading. An unoptimized 4 MB original uploads and serves exactly as-is.

Where the cover image appears

Once uploaded, the cover image appears in three places:

Public event page (/e/[slug]) — used as the hero background if no hero section background image has been set.
Embeds — any registration widget or event embed that shows the event image.
Attendee portal cards — the event cards shown to attendees on /my and /my/upcoming.

Hero section background image

The hero section background image is separate from the cover image. It is stored per microsite section (microsite_sections.content.background_image_url) and configured in the hero section editor inside the Website tab's Sections panel.

When the hero section has a background image set, it takes precedence over the cover image on the microsite page. The cover image still applies to embeds and portal cards regardless.

Setting a hero section background image overrides the cover image on the microsite — they can be different images. The cover image on the Portal tab and the hero background on the Website tab are independent controls.

Image optimization

Cover images are rendered using Next.js <Image> with unoptimized set. Vercel's Image CDN does not process or reformat them. No automatic WebP conversion, no responsive resizing, no quality compression happens at the CDN level.

Pre-optimize your image before uploading: export at 1600 px wide or narrower, use WebP or compressed JPEG, and target a file size under 500 KB for reliable load times on mobile connections.