GIF basics · 4 min read
What is the longest GIF ever made?
Quick answer
The best-known candidate is ASLAP (AS Long As Possible), a 1,000-year GIF by Finnish artist Juha van Ingen with Janne Särkelä. It has 48,140,288 frames and began playing in 2017. Its creators call it the world’s longest GIF, but we found no independent record certifying that.
Key takeaways
- ASLAP lasts 1,000 years, with each frame shown for about 11 minutes.
- It was created in 2015 and started playing at Kiasma in Helsinki in 2017, ending in 3017.
- “Longest GIF” is the creators’ claim. We found no Guinness World Records entry for it as of November 2026.
- It’s possible because the GIF format puts no limit on length.
What is the longest GIF in the world?
The most widely cited answer is ASLAP, short for AS Long As Possible, a looping animation that runs for 1,000 years. Finnish artist Juha van Ingen made it in 2015 with developer and sound artist Janne Särkelä, and timed it to begin in 2017, the GIF format’s 30th anniversary.
Its frames are simple: white numbers on a black background that count up through the loop. You could watch it all day and see only about 130 changes. The last frame won’t appear until 3017, when the whole thing starts again from frame one.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Artist | Juha van Ingen, with Janne Särkelä |
| Created | 2015; first shown as a concept at FISH Gallery, Helsinki |
| Began playing | 2017, at Kiasma museum in Helsinki |
| Frames | 48,140,288 |
| Time per frame | About 11 minutes |
| Length of one loop | 1,000 years |
| Held by | Kiasma (2017), V&A London (2023) and ZKM Karlsruhe (2024) have playback units |
How can a GIF last 1,000 years?
The clever part is that it doesn’t need trillions of frames. It uses very slow ones. GIF stores each frame’s delay as a two-byte number counted in hundredths of a second, so the longest wait any frame can have is 65,535 hundredths, or 655.35 seconds.
Reported figures put ASLAP’s delay at about 655.09 seconds per frame, right next to the format’s ceiling. Our own arithmetic agrees: 48,140,288 frames × 655.09 seconds comes to 1,000 years. This is what we mean when we say the format has no maximum length.
Are there other kinds of “longest” GIF?
It depends on what you measure. ASLAP’s claim is about running time. A separate 2015 project by Rafa Galeano, also called “The Longest GIF in the World”, is about physical length: it’s a tall image of 600 × 12,000 pixels. Neither claim contradicts the other.
A long GIF with lots of real content is a different challenge again, since a file like that would be huge. ASLAP gets around this by changing very little each frame and changing it very slowly.
What about long GIFs you could actually make?
Normal footage is another matter. Using the rate from our own test clip, about 244 KB per second at 480 px and 12 fps, here’s what longer GIFs would weigh:
Those files would be slow to load, and they’d exceed X’s 15 MB limit after about a minute. Playback is the other catch: browsers treat very short frame delays differently and can struggle with huge files, so what plays well on your computer may stutter on a phone. Frame rate and file size matter more than any format limit.
Want to try a long one? Our Long GIF Maker handles up to 5 minutes of video. It won’t reach 1,000 years, but it’s a good deal more practical.Open Long GIF Maker
For everyday GIFs, our guide to making a GIF from a video explains how to balance length, frame rate and size.
New to this topic? Start with our main guide: What is a GIF and how does it work?
Frequently asked questions
What is the longest GIF ever made?
The best-known candidate is ASLAP (AS Long As Possible) by Juha van Ingen with Janne Särkelä. It runs for 1,000 years and has 48,140,288 frames. Its creators describe it as the world’s longest GIF.
Is the longest GIF a Guinness World Record?
We found no Guinness World Records entry for ASLAP or any other longest GIF as of November 2026. The claim comes from the project’s creators and press coverage.
When will the 1,000-year GIF end?
ASLAP began playing in 2017, so it reaches its last frame in 3017. It then loops back to frame one.
How long does each frame of ASLAP last?
About 11 minutes, or roughly 655 seconds. That’s close to the longest delay a single GIF frame can have, which is 655.35 seconds.
Can I see the longest GIF?
The work is held by institutions including Kiasma in Helsinki, the V&A in London and ZKM in Karlsruhe, each with a playback unit. The project’s website has more details on where it’s shown.
Sources
- AS Long As Possible (Project website)
- ASLAP: 1000 year long GIF animation (Janne Särkelä, Sanara Creations)
- The 1,000-Year GIF (Hyperallergic, 2015)
- Finnish museum commits to playing a 1,000-year-long GIF (The Next Web, 2017)
- As Long As Possible (Wikipedia)
- The Longest GIF in the World (Rafa Galeano, Behance)
- Graphics Interchange Format, Version 89a (W3C archive of the CompuServe specification)
