Balloon Race Help

Changing Backgrounds

You can change (& upload) the background when the race is live - and you can change it as often as you like. Why not change the background on a regular basis whilst your race is live, you can upload your own or use the pre-uploaded library.

After you've uploaded or selected an image make sure you hit the green tick and then save:

The selected image will have a blue frame.

We recommend you upload your backgrounds sized to 1920px x 1600px. Uploading images to a website is not a thing to try on your mobile phone - use a PC or Mac. There's a reason most websites have a plain colour as a background - it's because images are difficult to size and fit on all devices. Trying to make a backgound image look good on an iPhone, iPad & PC is never going to look prefect so we have to compromise and choose a medium sized image.

Examples below of the rainblow image on the 3 devices (the first 2 iPhone images have been zoomed out to display more of the background):

3 iPhones zoomed out to display a bigger background Auto-generated description: A colorful digital scene features numerous hot air balloons with various designs and flags, set against a blue sky with clouds and a rainbow backdrop.

Auto-generated description: A colorful scene filled with various balloons, some featuring flags, icons, and cartoon designs, set against a cheerful sky with rainbows.

As well as being able to upload images the admin area has a library of backgrounds to choose from:

Library of backgounds for your balloon race

Make sure there are no spaces in your file name. For example "My Background.png" will not be accepted but "MyBackground.png" will. Avoid long file names with spaces and random characters (why not rename your file "background.png").

If your file is not a .png open it and export as .png

A good solution is a seamless image (like the Mario background) - when it’s tiled it's stitched together so looks OK.

Balloon Race Background

Tiled effect after zooming out:


Or - if you had Blue sea all around an island image that would work OK.
75% Of people that use the site are on mobile (a vertical screen) so we tried to make it work better on mobile.


The race had a single treasure island background for 12 years. I added the custom backgrounds for fun but I can't edit, size and upload all your images. Below is the library of backgrounds you can use as well as uploading your own. You can change the background as often as you like and during the live race.

It's always best to make sure you have permission to use the image you upload (if it's a photo you shot that should be fine). All the library images are purchased from shutterstock and are licenced.

The below seamless backgrounds were added to the library recently.