Passport Photo Requirements by Country: Size, Head and Background

Passport photos look alike around the world because nearly every issuing country follows the same document: ICAO Doc 9303, the specification for machine-readable travel documents published by the International Civil Aviation Organization, the UN agency based in Montreal. It sets out how a portrait must look so that border gates and facial-recognition systems can match your face to the chip in your passport. National rules are mostly local translations of that text, with a size, a head height and a background color added on top. That is why a photo that passes in one country usually fails in another only on geometry or color, almost never on pose.

The shared part is short. Face the camera straight on, with your head neither tilted nor turned. Keep your eyes open and visible, your mouth closed and your expression neutral. Light should be even, with no shadows across the face or behind the head, no red eye and no flash reflection on skin or lenses. The photo has to be in color, sharp and recent, and it has to show you as you look today, so a beauty filter, skin smoothing or a background swap that changes the edge of your hair is treated as editing. Nothing else belongs in the frame.

Recency is the one universal rule with different numbers. The US, Australia and most EU countries ask for a photo taken within the last six months, while the UK passport office asks for one taken within the last month. If your appearance has changed a lot since then, take a new one anyway.

The table below lists the published print size and background for the passports people search for most. Two countries link to their official photo page; for the others, check the passport office or consulate before you print. Max KB is shown only where a digital upload has a published file-size window. Prints have no file-size limit, but they do have a paper and quality rule.

Head height is the number that home-made photos most often get wrong, and it is measured from the bottom of the chin to the top of the hair, not to the forehead. On a 35 × 45 mm photo the usual range is 32–36 mm, which means the head fills about 70–80% of the height. The US range of 1 to 1 3/8 in on a 2 × 2 in photo is proportionally smaller, which is why a cropped EU photo looks too tight for a US application and a cropped US photo looks too loose for the UK.

India is the case that confuses most people because three sizes are in circulation. The passport application itself uses 35 × 45 mm on a white background, which appears as 4.5 × 3.5 cm on scanned forms, while Indian citizens applying for a US visa need the US 2 × 2 in format. If you are converting these sizes to pixels for an upload, the passport size photo in cm, inches and pixels guide has the conversion tables.

Every country wants a plain, evenly lit background with no shadows, texture or objects, but the color is not universal. The US accepts white or off-white, so a slightly creamy wall passes. China asks for white and tends to reject anything with a visible tint. India wants white. The UK asks for plain cream or light grey, a choice that keeps the outline of pale skin and blond hair visible where a very bright white would wash it out. Canada accepts white or a light color, and Australia white or light grey. Several European countries, Germany among them, have long preferred a neutral light grey, and some older national rules, along with a number of visa offices, used to ask for light blue.

The practical answer is to check the one document you are applying for, then pick a background that sits safely inside its rule. In the passport photo maker the Background option replaces whatever was behind you with white, light grey or blue, or keeps the original, and choosing a document under Country & document sets the usual color for it. Light grey is the safest single choice for the UK, Australia and most of the EU; white is the safe choice for the US, China and India. Blue is now mostly a visa-office request and rarely a passport rule.

Glasses are the rule that differs most between countries. The United States stopped accepting glasses in passport photos on November 1, 2016; you can wear them only with a signed medical statement explaining why they cannot be removed. The US passport photo requirements page has the full US list. The UK asks you to take glasses off if you can, and if you cannot, your eyes must be fully visible with no glare and no tinted lenses. Canada, Germany and many other countries still accept everyday prescription glasses on the same condition: clear lenses, no reflection over the eyes, and frames that do not cross the eyes. Sunglasses and tinted lenses are refused everywhere unless there is a medical reason.

Head coverings worn for religious or medical reasons are accepted in almost every country, as long as the whole face is visible from the bottom of the chin to the top of the forehead, with both edges of the face showing and no shadow across it. The US asks for a signed statement confirming that the covering is religious attire worn daily in public, or a doctor's statement for a medical covering. Hats, hoods, headphones and earbuds are refused.

Expression rules are more uniform than people expect. Almost every country asks for a neutral expression with the mouth closed, because a broad smile changes the measurements that facial-recognition software relies on. The US is the main exception: its rules accept a natural smile as long as both eyes stay open. If you are unsure, keep a relaxed, closed-mouth face, which passes everywhere. For clothing, avoid uniforms and anything the same color as the background; the what to wear for a passport photo guide covers colors and necklines.

Every country needs a separate passport photo for a baby, even a newborn, and almost every country relaxes the pose rules for them. In the UK, a child under one does not need to have their eyes open, and a child under six does not have to look straight at the camera or hold a neutral expression. The US asks that the child be the only person in the photo, with eyes open and no hand or pacifier in the frame. What does not relax is the background and the head size: there must be no hands, toys, pacifiers or parent's shoulder visible, and the head still has to sit inside the country's range.

The easiest method is to lay the baby on their back on a plain white or light grey sheet and photograph from directly above, in daylight from a window rather than with flash. The baby passport photo tool crops to the baby head range of the document you choose, which is easier than measuring a tiny face by hand.

More applications now go online, and a digital photo has its own rules on top of the visual ones: a pixel size, a file format and often a file-size window. The US State Department's digital spec, used for online forms such as the DS-160 visa application and the DV Lottery, is a square JPEG between 600 × 600 and 1200 × 1200 px, no larger than 240 KB. The UK online passport service asks for at least 600 × 750 px. China's online visa form wants 354 × 472 px or more in a 40–120 KB window. These checks are automatic, so a photo that passes at a counter can still fail the upload.

Printed photos follow the same visual rules plus physical ones. They must be printed on photo-quality paper, not cut from a sheet of plain paper, with no creases, ink streaks or borders, and at the exact outer size; a photo shop or a home 4 × 6 in print of a photo sheet usually meets this. Canada still asks for two identical prints from a commercial photographer, with the studio's name, address and the date on the back. Germany went further: since May 1, 2025 its passport and ID offices accept only digital photos sent by a certified photographer or taken at the office terminal, not paper prints.

If your application is online, make the digital file first and print later only if you need to. Choose the document under Country & document in the passport photo maker and tick Limit file size when a portal publishes a KB cap. Files up to 95 MB are accepted, nothing has to be installed, and the photo is deleted from the server 30 minutes after processing.

Examiners reject photos for a short list of reasons, and they are the same in most countries. Shadows top the list: on the face from overhead light, or on the wall behind the head from a flash. Wrong head size is next, almost always because the photo was cropped by eye instead of measured. After that come glare on glasses, a photo that is too old, low resolution and anything that looks edited.

Most of these faults can be fixed at home in a second attempt. The list below pairs each rejection with what to change, roughly in order of how often it happens. One thing that cannot be fixed afterwards is lighting, so if the original photo has a shadow across the face, take a new one rather than trying to brighten it; brightening a shadow usually reads as editing.