The Great Color Unban of 2026
The Great Color Unban of 2026 was a gradual restoration of text colors to the front page following The Great Color Ban of 2025/2026, during which FP disabled color on the front page as a countermeasure against NSFW spam.
The ability to apply limited color palettes to worlds was a new feature developed specifically for the color unban. This power was extended to all world owners on February 2nd, 2026, the first day of color restoration.
Also on February 2nd, a thread was created in the OWOT Discord where users could vote for which colors they wanted to be brought back next.
Lead-up to the end
Rscr was the first user to bring up the idea of a phased color release in December 2025.
rather than restoring all colors at once, i think fp should bring back colors in batches
like how in r/place 2023 you'd have to play with a limited color palette for the first few days
maybe for christmas only red and green will be allowed
— Rscr on December 24th, 2025
[...]
sounds like a neat idea, but it would require some extra coding
— FP on December 26th, 2025
False end
The ban was briefly lifted on January 1st, 2026 at 05:30 UTC. However it was reinstated within mere minutes, likely because someone created an NSFW image paste at the first possible opportunity.
January 2026
DMs between Catha'vi and FP on January 24th, 2026
FP: after I restore colors, I'm going to address all the botted text on spawn
Catha'vi: When will that be
FP: before the end of january
After the New Year delay, FP had planned to lift the color ban at the end of January 2026. At the last second, however, he decided to keep the ban going for one more day because a spammer was using hundreds of proxies to spam image pastes at Spawn.
Day 1: Red
After around six weeks of having no colors on the front page, I'm now reintroducing colors but at a slower pace before opening the 16 million color floodgates.
A list of available colors will be displayed when you click on Change color.
For today, I'm going to start with the color red.
— FP at 06:59 UTC on February 2nd, 2026
FP commenced a phased restoration of colors on February 2nd, 2026, starting with red (#FF0000) on the first day.
The reintroduction of red onto the canvas allowed for the creation of "trichroma pasters" (image pasters that mimicked other colors by combining green, blue and red) which became widespread over the next few days.
Among others, Banksy, Mr. Black and Grr.Z were some of the first to deploy this type of script at Spawn.
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Some of the first colored messages on February 2nd, 2026. The limited color release was initially broken, briefly allowing users to access the full range of colors. -
Red text incorporated into Banksy's link paster. -
Someone using background colors at Spawn, a feature that had yet to be restored. -
Trichromatic dithering. -
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Glasses Guy gets different colored glasses for each color that gets re-enabled.
Days 2 - 3: Green
coord links are now out a job — FP at 01:46 UTC on February 3rd, 2026
The color green (#008000) was enabled at around 01:40 UTC on February 3rd, 2026.
This was the same shade of green as that of coordinate links, which disappointed several users who wanted a lighter green for better dithering.
No new color was added on February 4th.
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Trichromatic dithering with green text instead of coord links (February 3rd, 2026) -
State of Spawn on that day (February 3rd, 2026) -
"Linkwich Greentime," an identification script by JanTechPL (February 3rd, 2026) -
"RELEASE THE 16M COLOR FILES" (February 3rd, 2026) -
Town by lime, with a clock script that UQ is begging for (February 3rd, 2026) -
![Kesherian Skies by Catzcute4, now with red text (February 3rd, 2026)[1]](/images/thumb/9/93/Kesherian_skies_5.png/89px-Kesherian_skies_5.png)
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![Cont.[1]](/images/thumb/c/c8/Kesherian_skies_6.png/120px-Kesherian_skies_6.png)
Cont.[1] -
By Mr. Black (February 4th, 2026) -
By Mr. Black (February 4th, 2026) -
By Rscr (February 4th, 2026)
![Kesherian Skies by Catzcute4, now with red text (February 3rd, 2026)[1]](/wiki/File:Kesherian_skies_5.png)
![Cont.[1]](/wiki/File:Kesherian_skies_6.png)
Days 4 - 5: Grey
is fp gonna double the amount of days we'll have to wait for each color each time 😭
i hope we're not gonna be waiting like 2^16777215 days or smth
— e_g. after no colors were restored on February 4th
FP re-enabled three shades of grey (#404040, #808080, and #c0c0c0) at around 03:14 UTC on February 5th, 2026.
The hex code for red was also changed slightly (from #FF0000 to #FF0001) so as to mess with the red border on a bot by AJLStick.
Grey was the only color (other than red) to have been brought back without winning a Discord color poll.
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February 5th, 2026 (Messages in the screenshot were edited by AJLStick.) -
February 5th, 2026 -
One of the few image pasters to make use of grey (by Mr. Black on February 5th, 2026) -
Sped up 2x (February 5th, 2026) -
February 6th, 2026 -
![Kesherian Skies, now with grey (February 6th, 2026)[1]](/images/thumb/a/a5/Kesherian_skies_7.png/120px-Kesherian_skies_7.png)
Kesherian Skies, now with grey (February 6th, 2026)[1] -
February 6th, 2026 -
![Kesherian Skies, now with grey (February 6th, 2026)[1]](/wiki/File:Kesherian_skies_7.png)
Day 6: Light green and yellow
WindowToaster: Okay, I have a question. Is there actually any plan of adding more colors to the palette soon, or are we just going to be at these 6 for a while? Also, will any cell colors be added?
[...]
Kiparisa: The color reintroduction is a circus
[...]
FP: I'll add new ones once I remember what colors there are
The colors #00ff00 and #ffff00 were enabled at around 06:00 UTC on February 7th, 2026.
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Sped up 4x -
Blue chain -
Glasses Guy -
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By Banksy -
Yellow incorporated into Mr. Black's image paster.
Days 7 - 9: Purple
adaptive image paster
>fetch available colors
>if black and white only, use vertical/horizontal blocks
>when links available, dithering is an option
>depending on what colors are available, dithering technique changes
#800080 was enabled at around 16:00 UTC on February 8th, 2026.
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![Kesherian Skies, now with light green, yellow, and purple. (February 8th, 2026)[1]](/images/thumb/0/0a/Kesherian_skies_8.png/120px-Kesherian_skies_8.png)
Kesherian Skies, now with light green, yellow, and purple. (February 8th, 2026)[1] -
Glasses Guy (February 8th, 2026) -
By Mr. Black (February 8th, 2026) -
By Mr. Black (February 8th, 2026) -
February 8th, 2026 -
By Mr. Black (February 9th, 2026) -
![February 9th, 2026[1]](/images/thumb/5/55/Kesherian_skies_9.png/120px-Kesherian_skies_9.png)
February 9th, 2026[1] -
By Mr. Black (February 9th, 2026) -
By WindowToaster (February 9th, 2026)
![Kesherian Skies, now with light green, yellow, and purple. (February 8th, 2026)[1]](/wiki/File:Kesherian_skies_8.png)
![February 9th, 2026[1]](/wiki/File:Kesherian_skies_9.png)
Days 10 - 11: Pink
#ffc0cb was re-enabled at around 01:00 UTC on February 11th, 2026.
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February 11th, 2026 -
February 11th, 2026 -
By Mr. Black (February 11th, 2026) -
By Neon1246 (February 11th, 2026) -
By Neon (February 12th, 2026) -
February 12th, 2026
Days 12 - 14: Sky blue
#87ceeb was enabled at around 03:00 UTC on February 13th, 2026.
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By Neon (February 13th, 2026) -
By Neon (February 13th, 2026) -
By Neon (February 13th, 2026) -
By Mr. Black (February 14th, 2026) -
February 15th, 2026 -
February 15th, 2026
Day 15: Average color of Kipa's pfp
#902F39, the average color of Kiparisa's Discord pfp, was enabled at around 22:44 UTC on February 15th, 2026. It was initially brought up as a joke but ended up winning the February 15th color poll after beating out brown in a tiebreaker.
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By Banksy -
"owot gives us no love for blue" -
Day 16: Orange
#ff8000 was enabled at 23:26 UTC on February 16th, 2026.
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By Mr. Black -
![[1]](/images/thumb/3/3d/Kesherian_skies_10.png/120px-Kesherian_skies_10.png)
![[1]](/wiki/File:Kesherian_skies_10.png)
Day 17: C0FFEE
#c0ffee (a.k.a. Arabica Mint) was enabled at around 01:25 UTC on February 18th, 2026.
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By Banksy -
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By Mr. Black -
By Mr. Black. (Doesn't actually contain #c0ffee but features every other color available at that point.)
Day 18: "Yellow"
#ffd700 (a.k.a. gold/dark yellow) was enabled at around 12:14 UTC on February 18th, 2026.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "how this works: each color is a function of x and y, where x and y are pixel positions, and it outputs a pair of 2 chars, each one can be space, full block, link full block, or coordlink full block. each color has an RGB vector with it, and for each pixel in the source image, the closest vector by euclidean distance is found and its corrosponding function is used to generate the next 2 characters. basically, a lot of images are sampled depending on what color is needed to try to get that color without looking too bad."