SVG Playing Cards, A Public Domain Full Deck

Something as simple as 54 small printed cards can have a huge impact upon human social history. From before the Middle Ages decks of playing cards have been used for games, fortune telling, gambling, magic tricks, and teaching mathematics (probability theory). Playing cards have embraced the widespread use of computers and the Internet and have long gone digital. Computers often come with card games, and online card games are popular. Published here are a set of SVG playing cards for use on computers and in apps. They can be downloaded from here as a zip file. Low resolution playing card graphics images are also in the zip file. An example is this Ace of Spades (the other playing card images are individually provided later in this article). Other bitmap densities of playing card files can be generated from the vector files using a drawing program, e.g. Inkscape.

What are SVG Playing Cards?

So what are SVG playing cards? SVG is for Scaler Vector Graphics. SVG is a graphics format that stores images as vectors (lines of a given length and angle), and other mathematical based elements. These mathematical elements describe an image. This is different from the common way of representing images as dots or pixels. The SVG format allows images to be scaled to different sizes without any loss of "sharpness". This makes an image of a playing card stored as SVG very useful. It can be resized without becoming blurry, and can be used to produce pixel based, or bitmap, images of playing cards at different sizes for different screen resolutions.

To obtain playing cards bitmaps at higher resolutions use one of the playing cards vector images and export it from a graphics program at a high dots per inch (DPI) setting. An example of a image program that can export SVGs to bitmaps, such as portable network graphic (PNG) format, is Inkscape (which you can download and use for free).

Why Yet Another Set of Playing Card Images

There are thousands of playing card images available from the Internet. What this SVG resource has is the full deck of cards images, and that includes SVG images of Joker cards, which are often overlooked. In addition, useful for developing apps that use playing cards, are card backs, and a blank card. Futhermore, the card symbols for the suits have been made slightly different from what has been seen before.

Public Domain Playing Card Images

What good is a set of playing card images if they cannot be freely used for any purpose. Fortunately, since playing cards have been around for hundreds of years, the commonly seen designs are free to use by anyone. The common designs are Public Domain playing card images. What is Public Domain? It means the image designs are not under copyright. Despite plenty of weird, wonderful, and imaginative playing card designs emerging, the traditional designs still dominate because of their familiarity, simplicity, cleaness, and being free to use and freely adapted by others. That has been done here. Despite tweaks to the pips and fonts, these vector playing cards are placed into the Public Domain. To use these card images no permission is required. Download them for free, no royalty payment is asked or required. I do ask you to provide a link to this article, it would be appreciated for the hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining this resource. Suggestions for improvements to the SVG playing cards are welcome.

Public Domain Images of Clubs Playing Cards

Here are exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the clubs suit from the SVG playing card images. Inkscape was used to export the PNGs at 96 DPI. Click on the card to see the SVG version (use the back button to return).

Public Domain Images of Diamonds Playing Cards

Now the exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the diamonds suit. Again, click on the card to see the SVG version and use the back button to return.

Public Domain Images of Spades Playing Cards

Here are the exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the spades suit. Click on the card to see the SVG version, use the back button to return.

If you want a simple Ace of Spaces it is available:

Public Domain Images of Hearts Playing Cards

Exported playing card bitmaps, PNGs, of the hearts suit. Click a card to see the SVG version, use the back button to return.

Public Domain Joker Playing Cards

Here are the two Joker cards to make up the common 54 card deck. As before, click a card to see the SVG version and use the back button to return.

Public Domain Playing Card Backs and a Blank Card

When developing card playing apps backs of cards are useful. Here is a handful of SVG playing card backs, a few of these designs give a nod to the playing cards used in older versions of Windows.

Finally, here's the blank playing card image, again click on the image for the blank playing card SVG .

If you have found these Public Domain SVG Playing Card images useful please provide a link to this article, it would be appreciated for the hard work that has gone into creating and maintaining this resource. Drop me an email, dan@tekeye.uk with information on your completed project that uses these playing card images and I will add a link to it.

See Also

• Download the SVG playing cards as a zip file.
• Inkscape - draw SVG graphic images for free.
• Some additional SVG cards for use with the deck above.
• See here on Tek Eye for a Mini SVG Playing Card Set.
• Xiong's alternative bitmap playing card fronts on Wikimedia Commons.
• For a full list of all the articles in Tek Eye see the full site Index.

Comments

Chris Aguilar on 13th of April 2025 at 23:06 said: Hi, these are a re-release of my LGPL licensed card set. Is there any reason I'm not seeing a proper credit here? Original cards (from 2011) can be found here:

https://totalnonsense.com/open-source-vector-playing-cards/

Dan at Tek Eye on 14th of February 2025 at 15:44 said: Hi Chris, thanks for the link to your set of SVG playing cards. It's great for people to have a choice of vector-based playing cards available. Just as you did, I crafted my playing cards from scratch using Inkscape (killing time during a COVID-19 lockdown in the UK). They are a different set, not a re-release of your set. Mine differ in file layout, playing card size, aspect ratio, colour shades, font, pip design, back designs, and Joker designs. Xiong's court card bitmaps are a nice version of KEM cards for use in Inkscape, and they look great in our digital decks. It is interesting to see various design elements surviving for so long over the many decades of playing cards' existence:

John C. on 15th of February 2025 at 13:07 said: Thanks for this excellent and generous project. I volunteer as admin for the Nodebox forum and posted a link to your page there. Nodebox is an open source visual language developed by some Belgian academics, especially for generative artists (such as myself). It is pure vector, so your cards are an ideal resource. I don't have immediate plans to use your SVGs, but probably will do so some day. THANK YOU!

Dan at Tek Eye on 16th of February 2025 at 18:11 said: Great to see they work with NodeBox.

Medos on 28th January 2025 at 23:05 said: Thanks for your great job. Cards are fantastic for my app I'm programming. My app will be free.

Brian on 6th December 2024 at 04:25 said: I want to make a deck of cards using public domain cards and put an oval over the card and put something in the oval. Can I use these cards for this?

Dan from Tek Eye on 8th December 2024 at 13:20 said: Yes, you can. They are public domain which means you can produce your own modified version. You can use an SVG editor, see the link to Inkscape above, to add the oval and other images, layering as required.

Maddie S. on 28th October 2024 at 22:18 said: Hello! I want to say these playing cards have been super useful for personal projects and coding practice, so thank you for making them available! Thanks again!

Dan from Tek Eye on 29th October 2024 at 16:30 said: Thanks Maddie, and thanks for pointing out the small mistake in one of the cards which is now corrected. Thank you.

Kim M. on 24th April 2024 at 09:27 said: Thanks for providing these, very nice work :-)

Pete on 4th February 2024 at 18:20 said: I'm putting together an online card game and these are super helpful. They look really nice! Would you like attribution and a link?

Dan from Tek Eye on 5th February 2024 at 09:34 said: It is good to see them being used, a link to this article would be great.

Abby on 22nd October 2023 at 15:40 said: Thank you so much for these, this has saved me a lot of time!

Giorgos Karatzas on 17th September 2023 at 23:04 said: Hi!

Very nice work, congrats!

I would like to use some of these cards in an HTML page I am developing, and I would like to ask you if there is a way to scale down these SVGs.

Thanks in advance.

Dan from Tek Eye on 18th September 2023 at 16:49 said: Thanks for your comment Giorgos, I am happy you like the playing cards SVGs.

A graphics program that can export SVGs to different density bitmaps can be used to produce scale bitmap versions. I use the free Inkscape program to export bitmaps of different densities (sizes). Alternatively, most modern browsers support the SVG format and "height" and "sizes" attributes can be defined on the HTML image tag.

Archived Comments

Gil on 6th September 2022 at 21:11 said: Thank you very much for this!

Trevor on 2nd April 2021 at 18:36 said: Thanks for making these! These are going to be very useful in my card game app.

A comment on the 6th April 2021 at 04:53 said: Thanks so much, saved me a bunch of time!

Anton on the 3rd January 2021 at 01:56 said: Great, these are awesome! I don't get the slogan on the Ace of Spades, but that's fine.

Tek Eye on the 3rd January 2021 at 16:04 said: Thanks for liking these playing card images Anton. The Ace of Spaces slogan is a play on two historical aspects of the Ace of Spaces playing card. Firstly, the Ace of Spades was traditionally a more ornate card because it needed to indicate that a tax, or duty, had been paid to the relevant authorities. Such duties not longer exist, but ornate Aces of Spades are still produced. An ornate Ace of Spades sometimes includes a skull in its design, maybe derived from old French fortune-telling tradition where an Ace of Spades indicated bad luck or a future death. Therefore, we have the Ace of Spades as a death card and its link to paying duty, or tax. The added phrase, Living a good life is duty paid., is saying living an honourable and good life (being good to yourself, others and the planet) is your payment to the world for the time you spend alive on it.