I have /path/to/my/theme/static/css/frontend.css which is called by base.html <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="{{ STATIC_URL }}css/frontend.css" media="all" /> In which I've got a background for the header: #header-wrapper min-width: 960px; height: 150px; background: transparent url(img/header-bg.png) repeat-x center bottom; } The file is /path/to/my/theme/static/img I've run manage.py collectstatic to gather the files and almost everything looks correct except the link generated looks like: http://example.com/static/css/img/header-bg.png In which the image does not show, because the correct URL is: http://example.com/static/img/header-bg.png Where am I going wrong??