Passport Photo Requirements by Country (2026 Guide)

Why every country is different

Almost every passport authority follows the ICAO 9303 standard for machine-readable travel documents, but each country layers its own rules on top: a different print size, a different head height, sometimes a different background colour. A photo that passes in London can be rejected in Washington purely because the crop is wrong.

The two things that change most often between countries are the print dimensions and the proportion of the frame your head must fill. Get those two right and you are most of the way there.

The seven most requested sizes

Here are the specifications SnapPass AI supports out of the box:

• United States passport — 2 x 2 inches (51 x 51 mm), head 25–35 mm, plain white or off-white background.
• United Kingdom passport and visa — 35 x 45 mm, head 29–34 mm, plain light grey or cream background.
• Schengen / EU — 35 x 45 mm, head 32–36 mm, plain light background, neutral expression.
• Canada passport — 50 x 70 mm, head 31–36 mm, plain white background, printed with the photographer's details on the back for paper submissions.
• India passport — 35 x 45 mm, face centred and filling roughly 70–80% of the frame, plain white background.
• Australia passport — 35 x 45 mm, head 32–36 mm, plain light background with no shadow.
• China visa — 33 x 48 mm, head 28–33 mm, plain white background, ears usually visible.

Rules that apply almost everywhere

Whatever the country, these hold true: a neutral expression with your mouth closed, both eyes open and clearly visible, no glare on glasses (many countries now simply ban glasses), no head covering except for religious reasons, even lighting with no shadow on your face or behind your head, and a photo taken within the last six months.

Digital submissions add their own constraints — typically a minimum pixel size and a maximum file size in kilobytes. Always check the upload page of the authority you are applying to.

Getting the size right without a studio

The hard part of a home passport photo is not the picture — phone cameras are more than good enough — it is the crop. Cropping by eye almost always leaves the head too small or too low in the frame.

SnapPass AI handles that step: pick your country preset, upload a plain selfie, and the photo is cropped, centred and exported at 300 DPI at the exact millimetre size required.