Free and Customizable YouTube Thumbnail Templates

Imagine spending hours creating amazing YouTube content only to watch it disappear into the YouTube crowd. 💔

Without attractive thumbnails, getting lost in the sea of YouTube content is pretty easy. Viewers scroll past even the best of your content just because they don’t find it compelling or they don’t recognize your channel.

This is where YouTube thumbnail templates help.

These templates let you create professional-looking thumbnails quickly, without the hassle of starting from scratch. They also ensure design consistency across videos, positively impacting brand recognition, and letting you focus on creating great content.

In this listicle, we’ve covered the best 20 YouTube thumbnail templates that can make your life easier.

What Are YouTube Thumbnail Templates?

YouTube thumbnail templates are pre-designed, editable layouts to create visually appealing thumbnails for YouTube videos to be published across social platforms and websites. These templates include text areas, image placeholders, and graphics that comply with YouTube’s standard format.

The YouTube thumbnail templates serve as frameworks that save time and effort by providing the basic structure for thumbnails. You can then customize these templates to match the style of your product or personalized videos.

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What Makes a Good YouTube Thumbnail Template?

A good YouTube thumbnail template should have the following attributes:

• Customization options: Choose templates that offer the flexibility to modify fonts, colors, images, and other elements to align with your brand while maintaining a clear structure
• Consistent framework: Pick templates that establish a repeatable structure that can help maintain visual consistency across your YouTube channel’s content while allowing for specific customizations
• Strategic text and image placements: Go for templates that provide proper placements for images, headlines, subtitles, etc. Make sure that the sub-heading font size is legible while maintaining the thumbnail aesthetics
•  Simplicity and ease of use: Look for templates that are easy to customize from desktop or mobile devices. They must be clean with drag-and-drop capabilities that can help you edit them with any hassles

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Free YouTube Thumbnail Templates

Now, let’s explore the best YouTube thumbnail templates and how you can use them to increase views.

1. ClickUp YouTube Thumbnail Template

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Trying to garner more views? The ClickUp YouTube Thumbnail Template can help you create eye-catching thumbnail designs.

This YouTube-optimized, ready-made template can help you get more clicks from potential viewers. It offers time-tracking capabilities, tags, dependency warnings, and other features to improve video thumbnail tracking. The best part? It has a Production Board View that lets you keep all your thumbnail information in one easy-to-access place.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Create custom thumbnails aligned with brand guidelines
• Organize and track thumbnail drafts
• Stay updated on each of the thumbnails’ progress

2. ClickUp YouTube Content Plan Template

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Whether you’re a marketer publishing product videos or a health and fitness content creator posting yoga videos, ClickUp YouTube Content Planner Template has everything you need to streamline your YouTube content production process.

The highlight of this template is its Content Pillar Timeline View, which helps you organize content around core themes or ‘pillars.’ It uses the timeline or Gantt Chart View to map out when a video will be created, edited, and published.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Collaborate on ideas using the Whiteboard view
• Centralize content planning
• Organize content ideas, content tasks, and deadlines
• Track your content through the various production stages

3. ClickUp YouTube Video Production Template

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The ClickUp YouTube Video Production Template helps you plan and organize your entire video production process in a centralized place. This template gives you a comprehensive view of all tasks—from planning to post-production.

The best part is that you can create Custom Fields and add attributes to video categories to manage video production efficiently. For example, you can add fields for video captions, scriptwriters, duration, publishing channels, and more.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Plan and collaborate on videos
• Track progress and set due dates
• Organize scripts, footage, and storyboards

4. ClickUp YouTube Planning and Production Template

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Does media planning and production on YouTube ever feel chaotic? If yes, this template can bring order to the chaos. The ClickUp YouTube Planning and Production Template by Nate Black can help you streamline your overall YouTube content creation process.

What stands out is that this template has an ‘Affiliates & Sponsors’ section where you can track your video sponsors using Custom Statuses like ‘potential deal,’ ‘incoming request,’ ‘ongoing,’ and ‘in communication.’

Plus, you get a ‘Direction’ page where you can start your YouTube planning by answering questions like what you want to do with YouTube, your brand standards and enemies, your position in the company, and more.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Refine the YouTube content creation process
• Produce and publish high-quality videos
• Brainstorm ideas, organize video assets, and track performance

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5. ClickUp YouTube Template

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If growing your YouTube channel feels difficult, try using the ClickUp YouTube Template. This template helps you chalk out everything from video ideas to marketing campaign management.

The template’s unique views like ‘2.0 Videos’ and ‘Upload Schedule’ make it easier to track your YouTube content so nothing slips through the cracks. With 2.0 Videos, you can categorize each video into playlists and attach URLs for easy access. Additionally, you can maintain an upload schedule and automate sharing videos with the audience across social channels using ClickUp Automations.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

•  Ideate, organize, and manage video content in a single place
• Collaborate with team members on projects, videos, and marketing campaigns
• Track the progress of each video from pre-production to post-production

6. ClickUp UX Roadmap Template

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If you’re a designer or YouTuber looking for the perfect customizable YouTube thumbnail template that helps create an amazing user experience, your search ends here.

The ClickUp UX Roadmap Template lets you fully visualize your YouTube thumbnail design project. With this template, you can map out the evolution of your thumbnail designs, track different versions, gather feedback, and ensure continuous improvement.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Track the progress of your thumbnail designs
• Prioritize ideas based on business goals and user needs
• Create a roadmap for UX tasks, such as user testing, research, and thumbnail design iteration
• Get visibility into the progress and milestones of your projects

This template helps align your team on the bigger picture and sets up a solid system to track tasks, deliverables, achievements, potential roadblocks, etc., in one place.

7. ClickUp Graphic Design Template

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Design workflows can be chaotic: requests lost in email, endless revisions with cluttered folders of revised.jpg files, vague timelines, missed due dates, resulting in an inefficient design process.

Enter the ClickUp Graphic Design Template — you have organized files, up-to-date timelines, prioritized tasks, and a systematic design workflow. This template helps automate your workflows, tasks, deadlines for YouTube video production and lets you focus more on designing thumbnails and other graphics for your videos. 

The template’s Embed View can import work from web-based design apps, editor tools, and cloud storage. Plus, it supports Custom Fields, which lets you add details to projects, including quality ratings, mock-up links, draft phases, and more. 

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Visualize and prioritize design tasks
• Access all design files easily
• Set time estimates for tasks and projects

8. ClickUp Content Management Template

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Managing content can be tough, especially when you’re scaling content production. There’s handling social channels, communicating with multiple stakeholders, tracking timelines, and so much more. This is where the ClickUp Content Management Template comes in. It helps with planning, organizing, and tracking your YouTube content.

You can use the templates 8+ views to visualize work the way you want. For instance, the ClickUp Board View helps you track all tasks, their progress, and deadlines at a glance. You can also use the Gantt Chart View to set timelines, identify potential issues, and ensure on-time deliveries.

The best part? Different types of content creators can use this template to efficiently manage various content types—emails, blog posts, websites, videos, and podcasts.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Get visibility into content production and collaborate with your team in real time
• Standardize content formatting and styling
•  Speed up content revision and publishing
• Measure performance against set goals

9. ClickUp Creative Project Plan Template

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The ClickUp Creative Project Plan Template can help you organize, coordinate, and manage your creative projects effectively.

The template provides a roadmap for the project and ensures that everything is achieved seamlessly without exceeding budgets. It also enables you to break down complex tasks, prioritize them, and get them done on time.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Keep stakeholders updated on project objectives and timelines
• Make quick adjustments to projects
• Manage tasks to help teams stay focused
• Get visibility into to-dos so you don’t miss out on anything

10. ClickUp Style Guide Template

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Without brand style, you risk losing your business in a sea of anonymity. You become indistinguishable and struggle with consistency that directly impacts brand awareness and recognition.

With the ClickUp Style Guide Template, you no longer need to worry about keeping your brand coherent. This template helps you document your brand style guide with ClickUp Docs and makes it accessible so teams can refer to the design elements whenever they need to.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Organize branding elements in one place
• Ensure your teams use the same brand style across various platforms
• Set standards to be followed and avoid frequent revisions

 11. Travel Vlog YouTube Thumbnail Template by Canva

Want to design a travel vlog thumbnail that screams adventure? Canva’s Travel Vlog YouTube Thumbnail Template can help you create custom, attractive thumbnails without designing them from scratch.

You can simply drag and drop your favorite travel snaps and add custom text with a vlog title and necessary keywords.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Add different elements or drawings to the thumbnail to make it even more appealing to the audience
• Add brand logos and color palette
• Tweak the thumbnail colors (which are white, blue, and yellow by default) to match your brand style

12. Graphic Design Course YouTube Thumbnail Template by Canva

If you’ve started video marketing for your newly launched graphic design course, Canva’s Graphic Design Course YouTube Thumbnail Template can help you create eye-catching thumbnails without extensive effort.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Use this yellow-black-themed modern course thumbnail to promote your courses through YouTube videos
• Publish snippets of your course to communicate your course highlights
• Customize the template with your course title, images, brand colors and logo, and other visual elements like fonts, layouts, and graphics to make it stand out

13. Breaking News YouTube Thumbnail Template by Canva

Canva’s Breaking News YouTube Thumbnail Template is designed to grab attention, literally. Its bold red color scheme can stop viewers on your video as they browse through YouTube’s content gallery.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Easily customize the template to break big news to the audience, such as mergers, product updates, new product launches, or any major events
• Customize the overall design and change the headline to fit the template into more categories
• Align it to your channel’s branding style

14. Relaxing Music YouTube Thumbnail Template by Canva

Canva’s Relaxing Music YouTube Thumbnail Template is for music channels that want to help viewers unwind after a long day at work. The calming blue palette and landscape visual, paired with clean fonts, makes the thumbnail stand out.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Visually communicate a relaxing element, making the video click-worthy for the viewers
• Make your music heard with this template’s zen background
• Customize overall text and design with visual elements

15. Simple Business YouTube Thumbnail Template by Canva

With Canva’s Simple Business YouTube Thumbnail Template, you can avoid getting lost in the YouTube noise. This simple black-green-themed template can help you create professional thumbnails for your corporate videos.

The template’s professional aesthetic and minimalistic design cuts through the clutter and conveys only what the audience needs to know. It’s perfect for tutorials, showcasing products, and sharing business insights without overwhelming the viewers.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Create thumbnails for explainer or educational videos
• Customize the background color to match your channel’s aesthetics
• Add brand icons and other visual elements

16. Podcast YouTube Thumbnail Template by Canva

Want to boost your podcast’s visibility on YouTube? Canva’s Podcast YouTube Thumbnail Template can help you with its attention-grabbing color palette, strategic use of visuals, layout, and dynamic fonts.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Instantly communicate the vibe of your podcast along with important details like episode number, guest, host, and podcast title
• Add your channel’s logo to boost brand recognition
• Customize the text and visuals with ease

17. Gym Class YouTube Thumbnail Template by Freepik

Freepik’s Gym Class YouTube Thumbnail Template has a powerful visual that can motivate viewers to take their first step toward fitness. It highlights a human in action with strong fonts and a clean layout so you can communicate the key information in seconds.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Customize the template using Photoshop and swap images
• Tweak titles and subtitles to match the theme of your gym session
• Align the complete design with your fitness channel

18. Food Channel YouTube Thumbnail Template by Freepik

Looking for a minimalistic YouTube thumbnail for your food channel? Freepik’s Food Channel YouTube Thumbnail Template offers a clean and vibrant aesthetic that can make your food channel stand out.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Replace cluttered images of mouthwatering dishes to garner more views
• Customize the title with your recipe or channel’s name to communicate the key highlights of the video
• Download the template in .ai, eps, jpg formats, and even as a zip file

19. Food Recipes YouTube Thumbnail Template by Adobe

Want your viewers to stop scrolling and watch the full recipes on your YouTube channel? Adobe’s Food Recipes YouTube Thumbnail Template can entice viewers to click.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Showcase your dish and highlight the key ingredients
• Customize the text to add headings, cooking tips, or your channel’s name
• Use Adobe’s built-in tools to add graphics and overlays, and change the color scheme to make the thumbnail pop

20. Podcast YouTube Thumbnail Template by VistaCreate

If you want to create a great first impression for your podcast, the VistaCreate’s Podcast YouTube Thumbnail Template can help you ustomize the podcast title, guest names, or episode numbers. You can download this template in png, jpg, pdf, and gif formats.

🌻 Why you’ll love this template:

• Swap the stock images with brand logos, headshots, or episode-specific images
• Adjust fonts and colors to match your channel
• Incorporate icons, shapes, and other visual elements

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Grow your Channel with the Best YouTube Thumbnail Templates

There’s no denying that YouTube’s algorithm depends on several factors. However, attractive thumbnails remain one of the most underrated tools to increase your viewers and click-through rates.

The templates that we’ve listed cover a wide range of content. There’s something for everyone—from brands and designers to YouTube creators sharing varied content types. All you need to do is choose the ones you need and start making an effort to ensure brand consistency.

While the templates by Canva and Freepik can help you design thumbnails, ClickUp’s templates can help you streamline your entire content creation process. You can create thumbnails, organize them, track timelines, schedule content publishing, and much more using these templates.

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