Passport & Visa Photo Rules
Printed Passport Photos Are Being Phased Out — But "Digital" Means Two Opposite Things
By ConvertDuck Team · Published August 13, 2026
Germany will not accept a passport photo you bring to the counter. Not a bad one — any one. Since 1 August 2025 a printed photograph is simply not part of the process.
New Zealand also stopped accepting printed photos. Its passport office publishes a step-by-step guide titled Take your own passport photo using an iPhone.
Both countries eliminated the printed photo. They reached opposite conclusions about who is allowed to hold the camera. That split — not the disappearance of paper — is the part worth understanding, and it's the part most "2026 passport photo rules" roundups flatten into a single scary sentence about going digital.
While building the photo tools on this site we worked through the official requirements for 132 of the 135 passport and visa routes we cover, reading the issuing authority's own page rather than someone's summary of it. Here is what the transition actually looks like on the ground. The full table, with each source and the date it was checked, lives on the requirements-by-country page.
The short version: "digital" and "you can't make it yourself" are two different changes, and only 26 of the countries we checked have made the second one. Almost every one is a passport rule — and the single visa exception turns out to explain why.
What Germany actually did
The law took effect on 1 May 2025. A transitional rule let municipalities keep accepting paper photos "in exceptional cases" until 31 July 2025, which is why you'll still find articles giving May as the date and others giving August. From 1 August 2025 there is no paper route at all — for passports, ID cards, electronic residence permits and travel documents issued under residence law.
Two ways to supply the photo replaced it. You can be photographed at the authority's own biometric terminal. Or you can go to a registered photo service — a studio, or the photo counter at a drugstore chain — which transmits the image to the authority through an encrypted cloud certified against the BSI's technical directive TR-03170. You walk out with a printout carrying a DataMatrix code, hand that over at the counter, and it's scanned to pull the photo out of the protected cloud. The code stays valid six months.
Note what you never touch in either path: the image file. That is the entire point.
Morphing is why, and paper was collateral damage
The German Interior Ministry names the reason directly. Digital image editing has made morphing practical — a technique, in the ministry's own words, where several facial images are fused into one composite image that carries the features of two or more faces at once.
The attack is straightforward once you see it. Person A can legally obtain a passport; person B cannot. They produce one image that is a careful blend of both faces, and A submits it. The document is genuine — issued by the real authority, with real security features. It just happens to verify against two people. B travels on A's passport, and the face-recognition gate agrees.
Here's the part that explains the printed photo's death. The weak point was never the paper. It was the gap. When you hand over an image — a print, or a file you uploaded — the authority receives a picture with no verifiable history. They can check whether it resembles the person standing in front of them. They cannot check whether it also resembles someone else, because a competent morph is built to survive exactly that inspection. A human at a counter is not going to catch it, and until recently neither were the automated checks.
Closing that gap means the image has to come from a camera the state trusts, over a channel nobody can intervene in. Once you require that, a printed photograph can't qualify no matter how good it is — its history ends at the print shop. Paper wasn't the target. Chain of custody was.
The fork: who holds the camera
Countries moving off paper split into two groups that have almost nothing in common except the word "digital".
Group 1 — the state takes the picture
In these countries your own photo is either refused outright or made irrelevant because you'll be photographed anyway. Preparing one is wasted effort. 26 of the countries we checked work this way:
| Country | What happens |
|---|---|
| Argentina | Photographed at the appointment — RENAPER photographs you at the appointment; the 40x40mm square with a pure white background is what they capture |
| Bangladesh | Photographed at the appointment — the e-passport enrolment office normally photographs you; bring a print only if your checklist asks for one |
| Brazil | Photographed at the appointment — the Polícia Federal photographs you at the appointment; two 50x70mm prints are still used at consulates abroad |
| Chile | Photographed at the appointment — the Registro Civil photographs you at the appointment; you do not need to bring one |
| China | Photographed at the appointment — you do not need to bring a photo — the exit-entry office photographs you free of charge, and a photo from the past 6 months can be reused if your appearance has not changed |
| Colombia | Photographed at the appointment — the consulate takes your photo, fingerprints and signature at the appointment; you do not need to bring one |
| Czechia | Photographed at the appointment — the office photographs you when you apply — you do not need to bring a print, and at a consulate abroad the consular officer takes it |
| Denmark | Photographed at the appointment — Borgerservice photographs you digitally (DKK 130); a print is only needed when applying from abroad |
| Ethiopia | Photographed at the appointment — the appointment day is the only day fingerprints and your photograph are taken, so there is nothing to prepare beforehand |
| Germany | Self-made photos not accepted — since 1 August 2025 German passports and ID cards take only digitally captured photos, from a Bürgeramt terminal or a certified studio |
| Ghana | Photographed at the appointment — you upload a photo with the online application and are photographed again at the in-person appointment |
| India | Photographed at the appointment — a photograph is not required at a PSK or POPSK — it is captured at the counter. Only DPC, SPC and CSC applications need you to bring one |
| Indonesia | Photographed at the appointment — you cannot bring a photo from home — every passport photo is taken by the immigration officer on the official system, alongside fingerprints and the interview |
| Kenya | Photographed at the appointment — you apply online but must appear in person at an immigration office, where the photo capture and biometric enrolment happen |
| Malaysia | Photographed at the appointment — the immigration officer at the counter checks your MyKad, scans your fingerprints and takes the photograph |
| Mexico | Self-made photos not accepted — since January 2024 the SRE photographs you at the appointment; photos you bring are rejected |
| Nigeria | Photographed at the appointment — you apply and pay online, then appear at the immigration office you chose for photograph and biometric capture |
| Norway | Photographed at the appointment — the police normally photograph you at the appointment, though some stations still ask you to bring one — check yours |
| Pakistan | Photographed at the appointment — at a passport office the official captures your photograph during fee verification; only the online application asks you to supply one yourself |
| Philippines | Photographed at the appointment — you do not need to bring a passport-sized photo — the DFA consular office digitally captures your photo and biometrics |
| Portugal | Photographed at the appointment — the Loja do Cidadão captures your photo, signature and fingerprints at the counter, so you do not need to bring one; consulates abroad ask for two identical prints instead |
| Sweden | Self-made photos not accepted — the passport office photographs you at the appointment; photos you bring are not accepted |
| Switzerland | Photographed at the appointment — a digital colour image is required and it is normally taken at the cantonal passport office; some cantons do let you bring your own digital photo, but you have to say so when you file the application |
| Thailand | Photographed at the appointment — the passport office records your photograph, fingerprints and iris scan at the appointment; you do not bring a photo |
| Ukraine | Photographed at the appointment — you are photographed and fingerprinted when you file the application; the background is white, so avoid wearing white clothing |
| Vietnam | Photographed at the appointment — you file the declaration online but must attend an Immigration Office, where the officer photographs you and takes your fingerprints on the spot |
Germany, Sweden and Mexico are the strict cases — a photo you bring is actively rejected. The rest are softer: nobody forbids you from bringing one, but the office is going to photograph you regardless, so it changes nothing. Norway is worth singling out because it's genuinely inconsistent — most stations photograph you, some still ask you to bring a print. Check the specific station rather than the national page.
China states it about as plainly as a government can: you do not need to bring a photo, and the exit-entry office takes one free of charge. It even lets you reuse a photo from the past six months if your appearance hasn't changed. That is worth holding next to the Chinese visa application, which still requires the applicant to supply a printed 33 x 48mm photo and clip it to the form — same country, opposite answer, decided entirely by which document you're applying for.
Group 2 — digital, but still your photo
These countries also stopped taking prints, and drew the opposite conclusion. The photo is still yours to produce; only the delivery changed.
| Country | How it works now |
|---|---|
| Egypt | A file or a print is accepted. |
| Finland | A file or a print is accepted. via Police photo service (Lupahallinto) |
| Greece | File upload only — no print accepted. via myPhoto (gov.gr) |
| Hong Kong | A file or a print is accepted. via Immigration Department (online / mobile app) |
| Ireland | A file or a print is accepted. via Passport Online (Photo Code) |
| Japan | A file or a print is accepted. via マイナポータル (Mynaportal) |
| Korea | A file or a print is accepted. via 외교부 온라인 여권 재발급 |
| New Zealand | File upload only — no print accepted. via Passports Online (passports.govt.nz) |
| Singapore | File upload only — no print accepted. via ICA e-Service (Singpass) |
| Taiwan | A file or a print is accepted. |
| United Arab Emirates | A file or a print is accepted. via ICP smart application / icp.gov.ae |
| United Kingdom | A file or a print is accepted. via GOV.UK passport application |
| United States | A file or a print is accepted. via MyTravelGov (DS-82 online renewal) |
New Zealand is the clearest statement of this position. The passport office tells you plainly that you can use a professional service or take a photo with your own device, and publishes phone-specific instructions to help. Two limits are worth memorising, because they trip people up: a scan of a printed photo will not be accepted, and a selfie will be rejected. Someone else has to hold the phone, and the file has to be born digital.
Greece is the freshest change on this list. Printed photographs were accepted "at the latest until 31/01/2026"; since 1 February 2026, an application filed inside Greece registers the photo through the myPhoto service on gov.gr, where it stays valid six months. That page also gives an unusually exact background spec — light, "preferably gray with an RGB value of (190;190;190) +/-10" — and a 40 × 60mm frame rather than the 35 × 45mm most of Europe uses. If you're working from a generic EU template, it's wrong for Greece on both counts.
The rule that predicts which group you're in
Across everything we checked, one pattern holds almost perfectly. Nearly every case where the applicant's own photo is refused or overridden is a passport rule.
The reason is structural rather than political. A passport authority serves its own citizens and can require them to show up — they're already coming in to give fingerprints, so adding a camera to that appointment costs nothing and closes the chain-of-custody gap completely. A visa authority is processing applications from people who are, by definition, somewhere else. There is no counter to summon them to.
Unless you build the counters. That is exactly what the United Kingdom did, and it is the one visa route on this list where you do not supply a photo. You file the application online, then attend a visa application centre — a commercial network operating in cities worldwide, run by Gerry's in Pakistan, VFS and TLScontact elsewhere — where your fingerprints and facial image are captured on the spot. The structural constraint was never a law of nature; it was a cost, and the UK paid it.
Which makes the UK the cleanest illustration of the whole split, because it does both things at once depending on who you are. If you need a visa, the state captures your face at a centre. If you are visa-exempt and need an ETA instead, you upload a photo yourself — and it must be a new, live image, explicitly not the one already in your passport. Same country, same border, opposite answers, decided by which document you need.
There is a quieter third answer, and Uganda is the clearest case of it. You upload a photograph with the online application, exactly as you would anywhere else — and then, at the last step, you report to an immigration office or the border in person for biometric capture. Nobody built a global counter network. The applicant simply has to turn up at the frontier anyway, so the state waits and takes the face there.
That is worth noticing because it explains the loose wording. Uganda's photo requirement is one line — a recent passport-size photograph taken in the last 6 months — with no size, no pixel count and no file ceiling. It can afford to be vague because the upload is paperwork, not the record. Compare a portal where the uploaded file is the biometric: China specifies a pixel box and a 40–120KB window, India's IBPS refuses to let the form advance until the image passes, Malaysia validates uploads automatically. Strictness tracks what the file is for, not how strict the country is.
So visa photos stay applicant-supplied nearly everywhere, and the movement there is from print to upload, not from you to them. India, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Qatar, Indonesia, Pakistan and the Maldives all now take a file through an e-visa portal.
Practical version: applying for a passport? Check whether they're going to photograph you before you prepare anything. Applying for a visa? You almost certainly still supply the photo yourself. Two exceptions: the UK, where a visa application centre captures your face instead, and countries like Uganda where you upload a photo and also get photographed on arrival. Otherwise just confirm whether they want a file or a print.
And sometimes there is no photo at all
There is a third answer that is easy to miss, because nobody advertises a requirement that does not exist. four of the routes we checked — Canada (eTA), ETIAS (EU), Kenya and Sri Lanka — collect no photograph anywhere in the application.
Europe's ETIAS is the well-known one. The EU's own page is titled "Applying for ETIAS: no health information or biometrics needed"; the form asks for personal details, passport data and travel history, and your face is captured at the border by the Entry/Exit System when you actually arrive.
Sri Lanka's ETA is the same shape and much less well known. Open the application on eta.gov.lk and you get 74 input fields, none of which accepts a file. The printed form the Department of Immigration and Emigration publishes runs to four pages without a photo box. Yet a search for "Sri Lanka ETA photo size" returns confident millimetre figures, copied between sites by people who never opened the form.
This is the logical endpoint of the trend the rest of this article describes. Print gave way to upload because the photo stopped being a piece of paper. Upload gives way to nothing at all once the identity check moves to the border — at which point the pre-travel application is a database query, and there is no reason to ask for a face months in advance.
The catch is that the acronym tells you nothing. The UK's ETA does want a photo, and a freshly taken one at that. Sri Lanka's ETA wants none. Same three letters, opposite answers.
The printed photo is not dead
36 of the routes we researched are still print-only, and some of them are places people assume have gone digital because a neighbouring country did.
France is the sharpest counterexample. Germany's change gets reported as a European trend; it isn't one. France still wants a printed photograph, taken by an authorised professional or an approved booth, no older than six months. And it carries a requirement that catches people who prepared for the rest of Europe first: the background must be plain and light, with white explicitly prohibited. A photo that would sail through a UK or US application fails in France for being too clean.
The full print-only list as it stands: Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Canada, France, Hong Kong, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, Nepal, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Two details in that group are easy to get wrong — Canada wants two prints with a guarantor's endorsement written on the back of one, and both Romania and Sri Lanka want three identical copies rather than the usual two.
Kazakhstan belongs to neither group and is worth a line of its own. It does not photograph you and it does not take a file; it restricts how the print was made. The requirement asks for a photograph printed on thick photographic paper and states that images produced by computer scanning, modelling or copying are not accepted. That is film-era language still sitting in a live regulation, and what it rules out in practice is the thing most people would now do — print the file at home. Take it to a photo lab instead.
How to check before you waste an afternoon
Three questions, in this order, answered from the issuing authority's own site rather than a photo vendor's:
- Will they photograph me at the appointment? If yes, stop — nothing else matters. This is the question almost nobody asks first, and it's the only one that can make the rest of the work pointless.
- File or print? If a file, look for a pixel minimum and a file-size ceiling, not just millimetres. Portals reject on those far more often than on framing.
- What background, exactly? "Light" is not a colour. France bans white, Greece publishes an RGB triplet, Finland and several others want off-white or grey. This is where a photo prepared against a generic template usually fails.
Our passport photo and visa photo pages carry the per-country figures we verified, including the submission channel and the date we last checked it. On the countries in Group 1 above we don't show a photo editor at all — there'd be no point.
Rules verified against official sources, most recently on August 19, 2026. Requirements change without much announcement — Greece's deadline passed in February 2026 and was still being reported wrongly months later — so confirm against the authority's own page before you apply.
Sources
- Vereinfachte Ausweisbeantragung ab Mai 2025 — Bundesministerium des Innern
- BSI TR-03170: Sichere elektronische Übermittlung von Lichtbildern — BSI
- Photograph specifications — Hellenic Police / passport.gov.gr
- Passport photos — New Zealand Passports (DIA)
- Photo d'identité pour passeport ou carte d'identité — service-public.gouv.fr
- Passport and national ID card — Swedish Police
- Photo / passport photo — UDI (Norway)
- Passport photo guidelines — Department of Foreign Affairs (Ireland)