Passport Photo Size by Country: 2026 Table

Find your country below for the printed size, digital size, head measurement and background. To clean up a photo for a form that allows editing, see our passport size photo guide. This page deals with dimensions, and every figure comes from that government's own page, checked in November 2026.

Where the page we checked gives no figure, the cell says so. Passport offices change these rules without much notice, so open the linked page for your country before you pay for prints.

India and Japan quote height first, so 4.5 x 3.5 cm and 45 x 35 mm describe the same upright photo as 35 x 45 mm. The table covers ordinary adult passports unless a row says otherwise. Children often have separate limits, and several of these offices publish them on the linked page.

Passport Seva's ICAO photo guidelines ask for a colour photo of 630 x 810 pixels on a white background. The face should take up 80 to 85% of the frame, and the whole head has to show from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin. The photo should be taken from 1.5 metres, with glasses off to avoid reflections.

Many applicants in India never need to bring a print at all. The application instruction booklet says a photograph is not required for applications submitted at a Passport Seva Kendra or Post Office Passport Seva Kendra, and the Passport Seva FAQ says the photo is captured there for applicants above 4. Children under 4 are the main exception. Carry a passport size photo for them, and follow the guideline for minors, which gives 45 x 35 mm.

Paper still applies at some collection centres. For those, the booklet gives 4.5 cm x 3.5 cm with a plain white background on good quality photo paper. It also says computer prints and photos cut from group pictures will not be accepted, so a home printout is a poor bet here.

Applying from abroad usually means uploading your own photo. A notice from the High Commission of India in Gaborone says that from 1 December 2025 all applicants there must upload an ICAO-compliant photograph. We also saw a 2 x 2 inch size quoted for Indian passports in a mission document we could not open, so we treat that figure as unconfirmed. If you apply through a mission, follow its current instruction.

Most of the table falls into one family. A 35x45 mm photo size, or something very close to it, covers India, the UK, New Zealand, Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan and South Korea. Australia and the Schengen guidance allow a range around it, and Ireland accepts up to 38 x 50 mm.

The 2x2 inch photo is the US format. It is square and measures 51 x 51 mm, so it will not fit a 35 x 45 mm rule. Trimming it down leaves the head the same size in a smaller frame, so check the result against the head limit for your destination.

Canada is the outlier at 50 x 70 mm, which is larger than anything else here. A Canadian print cannot be reused for a US application or the other way round.

For digital files, shape matters as much as pixel count. India's 630 x 810 has the same proportions as a 35 x 45 mm print, and so does South Korea's 413 x 531. New Zealand's digital rule uses a 3:4 ratio and Canada's uses 3:2, so a file cropped for a 35 x 45 mm print is the wrong shape for both. The comparison between India, South Korea and the 35 x 45 mm print is our own arithmetic from the published numbers.

A print can have the right outer dimensions and still miss the rule, because the head inside it has its own limit. The limits overlap without matching. On a 35 x 45 mm photo, a 28 mm head fits the Dutch range of 26 to 30 mm and falls short of the UK's 29 to 34 mm. A 35 mm head fits the French range of 3.2 to 3.6 cm and is too big for both the UK and the Netherlands.

The measuring points also differ. The UK measures crown to chin. Germany measures from the chin to the hairline. France and South Korea measure to the top of the skull and leave out the hair. India frames it as a share of the photo, with the face at 80 to 85%, while the Schengen guidance and France use 70 to 80%.

So a photo studio that says it does passport photos still needs to know which country you are applying to. Name the country when you book, and measure the print with a ruler before you leave.

Online applications often come with a separate set of numbers, and the file rules can be stricter than the print rules. The GOV.UK digital photo page asks for at least 600 x 750 pixels and a file between 50 KB and 10 MB. It also tells you not to crop the photo yourself, because that is done for you.

Canada accepts digital photos for online renewals only, as JPEG files of at least 1,200 x 1,800 pixels, and rejects scans of printed photos. Ireland also rules out scans, along with selfies, and warns that photos taken at home are less likely to meet its requirements. New Zealand accepts JPEG files from 250 KB to 5 MB. Singapore wants exactly 400 x 514 pixels for e-Services and allows resizing with image software.

Some countries take the choice away. Germany's Federal Interior Ministry says paper photos have not been accepted for identity documents at offices inside Germany since 1 May 2025, though missions abroad are exempt for now. Malaysia takes photos at the passport division with a live capture device, and asks for a print only for children under 4, at 35 x 50 mm on a shadowless white background. We left Malaysia out of the table for that reason.

This matters more than any measurement if you plan to use a background remover. Many passport offices forbid edited photos, and some name background changes directly.

India's guidelines say photos should be unaltered by computer software. The UK, the Netherlands and Ireland have similar rules. Canada says it will reject an altered photo, and lists editing software, filters and AI tools, along with background changes. Australia requires an unedited photo and lists an edited background among its examples of unacceptable photos. South Korea is the most explicit, banning background removal and placing a person onto a white background.

The US State Department lists photos that appear edited as unacceptable, and one of its bad examples is a background cropped with a retouching tool. New Zealand says not to edit, filter or use AI to change how you look. Singapore says not to alter or enhance the photo beyond resizing. Japan bars edits that change your face, such as enlarging eyes or removing moles, and says backgrounds on online uploads are processed to white automatically, so check the result before you submit.

The French and German pages we read do not mention retouching. That silence is not permission, so ask the office or use a studio. For an actual passport in any country on this list, the safe plan is an unedited photo taken against the right background.

Our passport photo background tool removes a background and lets you add a solid colour. It is free, needs no signup and adds no watermark. It accepts JPG, PNG and WebP files up to 10 MB and returns a transparent PNG at the resolution you uploaded. The editor offers solid backgrounds and a custom colour picker.

It does not crop to a passport size. It does not check whether your photo meets any rule, and it does not fix shadows on your face. You will need another tool to crop, such as your phone's photo app, and you will need to compare the result with the official rule yourself. We cannot promise that any photo will be accepted.

Use it for forms that allow an edited photo and ask for a set colour, such as a job application or an institutional ID. Read the form first. If a form asks for light blue, our blue background page explains the editor's light blue swatch, #C6E0F0, and the colour picker for matching another shade. No passport office we checked names that exact colour. France and the Netherlands list light blue as acceptable, and India does not, because its guidelines ask for white.

Start with the route you are using, since the same country can have different rules for print and upload. Open the official page linked in the table, then write down the outer size, the head range, the background and how recent the photo must be. The UK asks for a photo taken in the last month. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, France, Japan and South Korea use six months, as do the US and the Schengen guidance.

If you need prints, use a studio or a booth that knows your destination. Canada refuses home prints outright and the UK wants a professional standard of printing, on plain white photographic paper with no border. If you print a file yourself for a form that allows it, print at actual size and turn off any fit-to-page option, then check the result with a ruler.

Keep the original file. If an office asks for a new photo, you will want to start from the source rather than from a copy that has already been cropped.

All figures were checked in November 2026 on these official sources: Passport Seva and the booklet at passportindia.gov.in, the US State Department at travel.state.gov, GOV.UK, Canada.ca, the Australian Passport Office at passports.gov.au, New Zealand Passports at passports.govt.nz, Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs at ireland.ie, Service-Public in France, German missions at diplo.de and the Federal Interior Ministry at bmi.bund.de, Government.nl, Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs at mofa.go.jp, South Korea's passport site at passport.go.kr, Singapore's ICA at ica.gov.sg, and the European Commission's Home Affairs site.

We left out countries where we could not confirm a current figure on an official page, including China, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and the UAE. Their absence says nothing about their rules. Check with the issuing office directly. The Schengen row comes from Commission guidance, and an individual consulate or visa centre may add its own requirements.