HTML5 Please

<picture>

Safe to use with fallbackhtml

The <picture> element allows a designer to explicitly specify the right image to use for different scenarios, similar to using media queries but for image tag sources.

Verdict
Safe to use
Category
HTML features
Browser support
Can I Use
Works in
no IE

Should you use <picture> in 2026?

The element itself is merely a container; any number of <source> tags inside of <picture> is where all the magic happens. Finally, a required <img> element declares the default image to use if no other conditions are met. Browsers that do not support <picture> will gracefully fallback to this <img> tag, making this safe to use.

All major evergreen browsers support. <picture>. Safari supports it as of version 9.1. For Internet Explorer and older browsers, a polyfill is available, but it is not required.

Polyfills and fallbacks

PictureFill