Call of Duty mouse pads for the desk

Our Call of Duty mouse pads and desk mats carry art inspired by Activision's long-running shooter series, printed in high resolution from edge to edge on 3 mm neoprene. Fabric on top, a non-slip base underneath and a stitched border around the edge: the build is the same on every pad. Sizes start at 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm), enough for a mouse on its own, and climb through eight options to 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm), a mat for the whole desk; the sizes a design is printed in are listed on that design's page. We print a pad only once someone has ordered that design.

The first Call of Duty came out on PC in 2003, made by Infinity Ward, and a new game has followed almost every year since, from Infinity Ward, Treyarch and Sledgehammer Games in turn. Activision has published all of them, and since October 2023 Activision has been part of Microsoft. Over that time the series has moved from wartime Normandy to the Cold War, the near future and back again, and each stop has its own colors.

Eras as palettes

Most franchises have one look. Call of Duty has several, because it keeps changing where and when it takes place. That makes the era the first thing to decide: a World War II design and a Black Ops design share almost nothing except the name, and one of them will suit your desk much better than the other. Pick the decade, then the subject.

World War II in sepia and olive

Call of Duty began in the Second World War. The 2003 original and Call of Duty 2, from 2005, put you with American, British and Soviet soldiers in Europe and North Africa; World at War, in 2008, added the Pacific and the fall of Berlin; Call of Duty: WWII in 2017 and Vanguard in 2021 went back again. The palette is old film: olive drab, khaki, rust, mud and pale gray skies, with the grain of a newsreel.

That look suits a desk with wood, brass and warm light. A design styled like a weathered field map, with grid lines and hand-drawn arrows, sits on an oak desk like something left behind after a briefing, and it doesn't look like gaming gear at all.

Modern Warfare greens and tans

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, in 2007, moved the series to the present day and changed it for good. Its look is desert tan, urban gray and the grainy green of night vision, and its characters became the faces of the series: Captain Price in his boonie hat, Soap MacTavish and, from Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, Simon "Ghost" Riley in his skull balaclava. The rebooted Modern Warfare games from 2019 onward brought all three back.

Night-vision green is the boldest choice for a dark desk with green lighting. Ghost's mask, a black-and-white skull, is the starkest: it needs nothing behind it and suits a monochrome setup with black keys and white light.

Black Ops and the Cold War

Treyarch's Black Ops games took the series into secret history. The first, in 2010, follows Alex Mason through the 1960s, with numbers broadcasts and Vietnam; Black Ops Cold War, in 2020, is set in the early 1980s; Black Ops 6, in 2024, reaches the early 1990s and the Gulf War. The look shifts with the decade, from jungle green and grainy film to neon, VHS static and the glow of a CRT.

The 1980s side of Black Ops is the most fun to build a desk around. Hot pink and cyan type, scan lines and chunky retro computer graphics suit a desk with neon strips and a mechanical keyboard with bright caps, and they pair well with an old console on the shelf.

The jetpack years

For three years, Call of Duty went to the future. Advanced Warfare, in 2014, gave soldiers exoskeletons that boost-jump; Black Ops III, in 2015, added wall-running and cybernetics; Infinite Warfare, in 2016, took the fight into space. Their palette is white armor, gunmetal, chrome and cool blue holographic light, the cleanest look the series has had.

A design from these games suits a white desk with blue or cyan lighting, or a minimal setup where a dusty battlefield would feel out of place. Black Ops III also carried a large Zombies side, from Shadows of Evil to Der Eisendrache, so one game can supply both kinds of design.

Zombies, from Nacht der Untoten

Zombies started as a bonus. World at War unlocked it after the campaign in 2008, on a single small map, Nacht der Untoten, where up to four players held out against endless rounds of the undead. It grew into a mode of its own, and Treyarch has built it into almost every Black Ops game since, with its own characters, its own story and Easter egg quests that take a full evening to finish.

Its props are perfect desk art. Perk-a-Cola machines, Juggernog in red, Speed Cola in green and Quick Revive in blue, line up like a row of vending machines along the back edge of a mat, behind the keyboard where they stay in view. The Mystery Box, the Ray Gun and the Pack-a-Punch machine fill in the rest. The round counter, drawn as red tally marks in the early maps, makes a stark little design for the small pad.

A long night of high rounds

Zombies is played in sessions, not matches. A run to a high round, or a full Easter egg quest with three friends on voice chat, can keep you at the desk for hours, mostly backpedaling in circles while you lead a horde around the map, the move players call training. The neoprene under your wrist is cushioned for that kind of sitting, and the stitched edges hold up where your forearm rests on the front of the mat.

Zombies maps also work as layouts. A map with its rooms, doors and perk locations marked reads like a tactical plan, and it suits an XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm), where the plan has the depth to stay readable around a keyboard.

Nuketown on a long mat

Nuketown, the tiny 1950s test-site suburb from the first Black Ops, has two houses facing each other across a street, a pair of yards, parked vehicles and a crowd of mannequins. That layout is almost the shape of a desk mat. Put one house at each end and the street in the middle, and the keyboard parks itself in the road while both homes stay visible on either side. Its pastel paint and picket-fence cheer also make it one of the few Call of Duty maps that suit a light, bright desk.

Shipment on the small pad

Shipment, from Call of Duty 4, is the opposite: a tiny square yard of shipping containers where a match is chaos from the first second. It's small enough to show whole on the 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad, and its square layout fits there better than anywhere else in the range. For anyone who has spent an evening respawning into the same three containers, it's a joke in a single image.

Camo and the gold grind

Weapon camouflage has become a game of its own in Call of Duty: woodland, desert and digital patterns at first, then reward camos unlocked by finishing challenges with each gun, from gold to Black Ops II's Diamond and Black Ops III's Dark Matter. As a desk design, camo has one big advantage. It's an all-over pattern with no focal point, so the keyboard can cover any part of it without hiding anything that matters.

Woodland and desert camo suit a wood desk or an olive keyboard; Dark Matter's black and purple suits a dark setup with violet lighting; gold is for anyone who has finished the grind and wants the desk to say so.

Calling cards across a desk

In the modern games, your multiplayer identity includes a calling card, a wide banner shown beside your name. The format is already a long, shallow rectangle, so a design in that style fits the M, L and XL sizes without cropping. The cards people keep on display are the hard ones, earned for mastery or a rare challenge, and a mat in the same spirit makes the same point on a desk.

Warzone and Verdansk

Warzone, the free battle royale that launched in March 2020, dropped up to 150 players into Verdansk, a city of stadiums, dams and apartment blocks. A defeated player goes to the Gulag, a one-on-one fight in a prison shower room, for a chance to win back a place in the match. Battle royale maps are big, roughly square and full of named spots, which makes them better for the XXL or 4XL than for a narrow strip. A design built around the map, a parachute drop or the Gulag's tiled walls suits a desk where Warzone runs every evening.

A PC series from the start

It's easy to think of Call of Duty as a console game, but it began on PC, and its first entries were designed around a mouse and keyboard. That history shows in how PC players set up today: a full keyboard for movement, crouching, equipment and, in the older games, leaning, and a mouse with space to turn. A mat that holds both on one surface keeps the keyboard from creeping during a firefight and gives the mouse the same fabric top from one end to the other.

Sizes for a Call of Duty desk

Check a design's own page to see which sizes it is offered in; the table below pairs the main sizes with a Call of Duty setup.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	Shipment whole, or a Zombies round tally
Laptop desk	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	Ghost's mask beside a laptop
Compact keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	A calling-card banner under a tenkeyless board
Full keyboard and mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	Nuketown with a house at each end
Deep desk	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	A Zombies map you can actually read
Whole desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	Verdansk or a camo field end to end

That leaves the L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm), for a long, shallow desk, and the 3XL, 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm), for a desk that's wider than an XL needs but not deep enough for the XXL.

Gifts for a Call of Duty player

A Call of Duty pad suits someone who started with the World War II games on a family PC, someone who still talks about the Modern Warfare 2 campaign, a Zombies regular chasing a new Easter egg or a Warzone squad. Pick the era first and the subject second. When the desk is a mystery, XL is the safe middle: wide enough for a full keyboard and a mouse, shallow enough for a small desk.

Count on 1–3 business days for us to make the pad and then 2–5 business days for its trip from Turkey to a US address, so order a little ahead of a release day or a birthday.

Cleaning off a long session

Military greens and camo hide marks well; Nuketown pastels and white jetpack-era designs show them sooner. Run a damp cloth over the pad after a messy session and blot spilled drinks right away. Every so often, give it a proper hand wash in lukewarm water with a mild soap, rinse it clean, press it between towels and leave it lying flat to dry. None of that involves a washing machine, a dryer or an iron, and it never should.

A note on names

Call of Duty, Warzone, Black Ops, Modern Warfare and the names of characters, maps and modes are used here only to describe what our designs are inspired by. Padrift is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by Activision, Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Sledgehammer Games or Microsoft.