Django not recognizing the MEDIA_URL path?

It looks like your are using the debug server (your url is http://127.0.0.1:8000/...) . Did you install the static serve in your urls.py?

if settings.DEBUG:    urlpatterns += patterns('',        (r'^media/(?P<path>.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT, 'show_indexes':True}),)

The 'show_indexes':True options make possible to browse your media. Go to your medias root http://127.0.0.1:8000/media/ and see it there is something

You can either pass it to the template manually as others have suggested or ensure that you are using a RequestContext instead of plain Context. RequestContext will automatically populate the context with certain variables including MEDIA_URL and other media-related ones.

Example from docs:

def some_view(request):    # ...    return render_to_response('my_template.html',                              my_data_dictionary,                              context_instance=RequestContext(request))

It looks like ars has answered your real question… But you'll run into another problem: MEDIA_URL must be different from ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX. If they aren't, the ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX will take precedence. I usually fix this by changing ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX to /admin-media/.