This January 2015 post has some outdated info.

Check out our custom sticker sets announcement instead.

At Telegram, we try to reinvent the ordinary tools. The concept of stickers is not an exception. We've always felt that stickers in messaging apps sucked, because they typically provided a limited and paid experience in a walled-garden environment.

Today's update to Telegram for Android, iOS, Windows Phone and Desktops introduces a new kind of stickers – a free platform for artists and users willing to share emotions, built using an efficient and open technology.

Telegram stickers are grouped around emotions, not characters. They do not clutter the interface, but are shown only when they are relevant – you will see a list of emotionally corresponding stickers whenever you start a message with an emoji. All our stickers are and will be completely free, and you can always create and share your own stickers.

You can find the initial 14 stickers in this post.

And dozens more will soon follow.

Sharing your own stickers

To share stickers of your own, just save your sticker in WebP format with a transparency layer and send it to your friend as a document in Telegram (e.g. via Telegram Desktop). It will be shown as a sticker. Thanks to the WebP file format, Stickers on Telegram are displayed 5x faster compared to the other formats usually used in messaging apps.

Creating new stickers

Telegram is focused on people who like to create content. If you want your sticker to be seen by all Telegram users in the context menu corresponding to one of the emojis, you are welcome to submit it via a chat with our Stickers bot – telegram.me/stickers.

Freelancers can also sell us their work – we normally pay $100 for the exclusive use of a 512x512px sticker. Note that we accept only high-quality stickers that meet our criteria. Please study the stickers that we have designed in-house for the launch.

January 2, 2015

The Telegram Team