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Passport Photo Size Guide — All Countries 2026

By Abdulkeni Abdelwahid Updated 2026 14 min

Try it now: Pick your country and resize a compliant photo in 60 seconds

If you've ever had a passport or visa photo bounced back with a curt "does not meet requirements," you already know the problem: every country writes its own rulebook, and even a 2 mm slip can mean another trip to the photo booth. This 2026 guide collects the passport photo sizes by country that actually matter, explains the millimetre and pixel maths in plain English, and walks you through a free workflow on ImageGates that lands a compliant photo in under five minutes — no upload, fast online processing, high-quality results.

Why passport photo sizes are different in every country

It feels arbitrary, but there's a real reason your US passport photo is a 2×2 inch square while your friend's German one is a 35×45 mm rectangle. Most countries officially follow the ICAO 9303 biometric standard, which sets head proportions, lighting and pose — but it deliberately leaves the physical print size up to each issuing authority. So Washington kept the imperial 2×2 inch booth format from the 1950s, Brussels adopted the European 35×45 mm, and Canada split the difference with an unusual 50×70 mm.

Add another layer on top: digital upload portals. Embassies now demand specific pixel dimensions, JPEG file sizes (often 10–300 KB) and DPI values. The result is a maze that trips up around one in five first-time applicants. The good news? Once you understand the two numbers that matter — the print size and the head-height ratio — everything else is mechanical.

Common rejection reasons we see every week: wrong dimensions, head too small or too large in the frame, off-white background that "looks" white to your eye, glasses worn after the 2016 ICAO ban, shadows under the chin, JPEG file larger than the portal allows, and DPI under 300. We'll fix all of those below.

Passport photo size comparison across major issuing countries.

Global passport photo size breakdown (40+ countries)

Below is the most up-to-date passport photo size guide for 2026. Print size is given in both millimetres and inches, with the recommended pixel size at 300 DPI — the global biometric default. Head height is the chin-to-crown measurement.

North America

Country	Print size	Pixels (300 DPI)	Head height	Background
United States	2×2 in (51×51 mm)	600×600 px	25–35 mm	Pure white
Canada	50×70 mm (1.97×2.76 in)	591×827 px	31–36 mm	White / light grey
Mexico	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White

The US passport photo size is the famous 2×2 inch square — also used by the DS-11, DS-160 visa form and Green Card. The DS-160 additionally caps the JPEG at 240 KB, which is why we recommend running it through our compress image to 200 KB tool before uploading. Common US rejections: head smaller than 1 inch (25 mm), shadows from overhead lighting, off-white bedsheets photographed as cream.

United Kingdom & Europe

Country	Print size	Pixels (300 DPI)	Head height	Background
United Kingdom	35×45 mm	413×531 px	29–34 mm	Light grey / cream
Germany	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey (mandatory)
France	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey
Italy	35×40 mm	413×472 px	32–36 mm	White
Spain	32×26 mm	378×307 px	20–25 mm	White
Netherlands	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey
Poland	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light, uniform
Sweden	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey
Norway	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey
Switzerland	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey
Ireland	35×45 mm	413×531 px	29–34 mm	White
Schengen visa	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey

The UK passport photo size of 35×45 mm doubles as the Schengen visa standard, so a single well-shot photo can cover both a British passport renewal and most European visas. Germany is the strictest on background — pure white is rejected outright; you must use light grey.

Asia

Country	Print size	Pixels (300 DPI)	Head height	Background
India	2×2 in (51×51 mm)	600×600 px	25–35 mm	White
China	33×48 mm	390×567 px	28–33 mm	White
Japan	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
South Korea	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Philippines	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Indonesia	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Red (specific cases) / white
Vietnam	40×60 mm	472×709 px	32–36 mm	White
Thailand	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White / blue
Malaysia	35×50 mm	413×591 px	32–36 mm	Blue (passport), white (visa)
Singapore	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Pakistan	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Bangladesh	45×55 mm	531×650 px	32–36 mm	White

India's portals are notorious for tight file-size limits. After cropping, most applicants need to compress the image to 100 KB or 300 KB depending on which form they're filling.

Middle East

Country	Print size	Pixels (300 DPI)	Head height	Background
Saudi Arabia	40×60 mm	472×709 px	32–36 mm	White
UAE	43×55 mm	508×650 px	32–36 mm	White
Qatar	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Turkey	50×60 mm	591×709 px	32–36 mm	White
Iran	40×60 mm	472×709 px	32–36 mm	White
Israel	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White

Africa & Oceania

Country	Print size	Pixels (300 DPI)	Head height	Background
South Africa	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Nigeria	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Kenya	2×2 in (51×51 mm)	600×600 px	25–35 mm	White
Egypt	40×60 mm	472×709 px	32–36 mm	White
Ghana	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Australia	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey / white
New Zealand	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	Light grey

Latin America

Country	Print size	Pixels (300 DPI)	Head height	Background
Brazil	5×7 cm (50×70 mm)	591×827 px	32–36 mm	White
Argentina	4×4 cm (40×40 mm)	472×472 px	32–36 mm	White
Chile	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White
Colombia	3×4 cm (30×40 mm)	354×472 px	25–32 mm	White
Peru	35×45 mm	413×531 px	32–36 mm	White

For the full live list of visa photo requirements 2026 covering every country with country-specific tools and the latest consulate rules, see our all-countries photo sizes hub.

Global passport photo format zones at a glance.

How mm, inches and pixels actually convert

The single biggest source of rejection isn't the photographer — it's the calculator. Mixing up millimetres, inches and pixels at the wrong DPI gives you a photo that looks right on screen but fails the embassy's automated dimension check.

The two equations you actually need:

1 inch = 25.4 mm
Pixels = mm × (DPI ÷ 25.4) — so at 300 DPI, every mm equals roughly 11.81 pixels.

Worked examples for the most common passport photo dimensions in mm and pixels:

35×45 mm → 413×531 px at 300 DPI
2×2 in (51×51 mm) → 600×600 px at 300 DPI
50×70 mm → 591×827 px at 300 DPI
33×48 mm → 390×567 px at 300 DPI
40×60 mm → 472×709 px at 300 DPI

Why DPI matters more than you think

DPI (dots per inch) tells the printer how densely to pack pixels. Embassies want 300 DPI minimum because anything lower prints with visible blockiness — and the biometric scanner can't reliably locate the eyes, mouth and chin on a low-DPI file. A 600×600 pixel image at 72 DPI is the same number of pixels as one at 300 DPI, but most upload portals read the metadata and reject the 72 DPI version even when the pixel dimensions are correct.

For quick maths in either direction, our country-specific tools and the broader image resizer handle the DPI flag automatically so you never have to think about it.

The mm-to-pixel relationship at the standard 300 DPI biometric resolution.

JPG, PNG, HEIC — which file format to submit

Almost every embassy upload portal accepts JPG (.jpg or .jpeg) and nothing else. PNG is silently rejected even though it looks fine in preview, and HEIC files (the default on iPhones since 2017) are not recognised at all. The safe workflow is: shoot in whatever format your phone uses, then run it through a JPG converter before uploading. If you need to swap between formats more broadly, our image converter online handles JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC in both directions, completely client-side.

The 5 conversion mistakes we see every week

Treating cm and mm as interchangeable — 4 cm is 40 mm, not 4 mm.
Resizing at 72 DPI because the default in Photoshop and most online tools is screen-resolution.
Up-scaling a small phone photo instead of re-shooting at higher resolution.
Submitting a PNG renamed to .jpg — the file header still says PNG and portals catch it.
Stretching aspect ratio to force-fit a 35×45 rectangle into a 2×2 square. Always crop, never stretch.

Step-by-step: how to make a compliant passport photo online

Here is the exact 5-step workflow we recommend, used by tens of thousands of applicants every month on ImageGates. The whole thing takes about four minutes and never sends your photo to a server.

Take a fresh source photo. Stand 1.5 m from a plain white or light grey wall. Use diffused daylight from a window — never direct sunlight or overhead lamps. Hold the phone at eye level and frame from the chest up.
Open the right tool. Go to imagegates.com and pick your country on the passport & visa photo sizes page. The tool already knows the print size, head height and DPI required.
Clean up the background. If your wall isn't perfectly uniform, run the photo through the free background remover tool first and drop in pure white or 5%-grey.
Crop and resize automatically. The country tool locates your face, applies the right head-height ratio, and produces a file at the correct mm-and-pixel dimensions for 300 DPI printing or upload.
Compress to the portal's KB limit. Use the image compressor or one of the size-targeted variants (100 KB, 200 KB, 300 KB, 500 KB) to hit the exact limit without visible quality loss — and yes, you can compress image without quality loss using the right modern encoder.

That's the entire process. Want to print at home? Use our A4 print size tool to lay four identical 35×45 mm photos onto a single 4×6 inch sheet of photo paper. Need to submit a PDF instead? Convert the final JPG with image to PDF or pull pages from an existing scan with PDF to image. If your application is in Word format, our Word to PDF converter finishes the job.

The ImageGates passport photo workflow — upload, pick country, download.

Biometric passport photo rules every country shares

While print sizes diverge, the underlying biometric passport photo rules come from a single document: ICAO Doc 9303. Get these right and your photo will pass anywhere in the world.

Frontal pose. Head squared to the camera, not tilted or rotated. Both ears should be roughly equidistant from the frame edges.
Neutral expression. Mouth closed, no smile, no raised eyebrows. The biometric system measures distances between facial landmarks; smiling distorts them.
Eyes open and clearly visible. No hair across the eyes, no tinted lenses, and since 2016 no glasses at all in the US, UK, Schengen, Canada and Australia.
Even lighting. No shadow under the chin or on the background. A second light source or a piece of white card as a reflector solves 90% of shadow problems.
Plain background. Uniform colour, no objects, no other people, no patterns.
Recent. Taken within the last six months. Embassies cross-reference with your previous photo to flag obvious staleness.

Religious head coverings worn daily are accepted in every ICAO country, provided the face from the forehead to the chin is fully visible.

How to resize a passport photo correctly (without distorting it)

The number-one reason a technically-correct photo still gets rejected is bad resizing. People take a phone photo at 4032×3024 pixels and squash it down to 600×600 — which throws away facial proportions and changes the head-height ratio.

The correct order of operations is:

Crop first to the right aspect ratio (square for US/India, 7:9 for 35×45 mm countries, etc.). Use a face-detection crop, not a manual one.
Then resize to the exact pixel dimensions for your country.
Then set DPI to 300 in the file metadata.
Then compress to the portal's KB limit using a quality slider rather than a fixed quality value.

Doing it in any other order produces visible artifacts. Our country tools chain those four steps automatically — and the same logic lives inside the generic image resizer if you want to do it by hand.

Country deep dives: US, UK, Canada, India, Schengen

The five most-searched passport photo size queries on Google deserve their own quick guide:

US passport photo size (2×2 inches / 51×51 mm)

Use 600×600 pixels at 300 DPI for printing, or 1200×1200 px if uploading to the State Department DS-11 online portal. Background must be pure white (RGB ≥ 245). Head height 1 to 1⅜ inches. DS-160 visa form caps file size at 240 KB JPEG. Full guide: USA passport photo specs.

UK passport photo size (35×45 mm)

HM Passport Office accepts both printed and digital. Digital code: 50×50 mm preview but the uploaded photo must be 600 px on the shortest side, JPEG, between 50 KB and 10 MB. Light grey background works best. Full guide: UK passport photo specs.

Canada passport photo size (50×70 mm)

The only country in the world using this odd format. Head height 31–36 mm. Two identical prints required, both signed and dated on the back by the photographer. Glasses banned. Full guide: Canada passport photo specs.

India passport photo size (2×2 inches)

Passport Seva uses the 51×51 mm square. Visa portals vary — student and tourist visas often want 35×45 mm at 10–300 KB JPEG. Full guide: India passport photo specs.

Schengen visa photo size (35×45 mm)

All 27 Schengen consulates officially accept the ICAO 35×45 mm format with 32–36 mm head height and light grey background. Germany insists on grey; France, Spain and Italy accept white. Full guide: Schengen visa photo specs.

Printing and submitting — the last 10% that trips people up

Once the digital file is right, two things still go wrong:

Wrong paper. Embassies want 200+ gsm glossy photographic paper. Standard inkjet paper warps, fades and shows fingerprints — every consulate clerk knows what it looks like.
Wrong cut. If you print four photos on a 4×6 sheet, leave a 2 mm white border around each so the scissors don't slice the head. Use our A4 print layout tool which adds the borders automatically.

For online submissions, double-check the filename — many portals reject files with spaces, accented characters or unusual extensions like .jpe or .jpeg2000. Stick to lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens and the .jpg extension.