Make Israel Visa Photo

Israeli missions ask for "two recent duplicate passport photos, color against a white background, with full front view of face, measuring 5x5 cm". The same page then repeats the figure twice more, as "a current photograph (5 x 5 cm!)" and "1 recent passport photo in the size 5 x 5 cm! (American format)".

Those exclamation marks are on the mission's own page. An office does not punctuate a measurement like that unless it keeps receiving something else.

What it keeps receiving is presumably the 35x45mm rectangle used across Europe and most of the Middle East. This page used to describe that rectangle too, and it was wrong — corrected on 17 August 2026.

Most size mismatches are recoverable. If you have a 35x45mm photo and need 35x50mm, there is a version of the same shot that works, because the aspect ratio is close enough to re-crop.

Square is different. Cutting a 50x50mm square out of a 35x45mm photo is impossible — the photo is only 35mm wide. You cannot add width that was never captured, so a spare Schengen photo is not a starting point here, it is a dead end.

That is why this correction matters more than a few millimetres would. Anyone who followed the old version of this page arrived at the counter holding something unusable, with no way to fix it on the spot.

Work from the original photograph, framed square, rather than from a print or file already cropped to a rectangle.

The Berlin page calls 5x5cm the American format, and the New York consulate writes the same requirement as "2 × 2 inches" on its passport page. Israel treats the two as interchangeable.

They are not quite identical — 2 inches is 50.8mm, so 5x5cm is half a millimetre smaller each way. Nobody is measuring to that tolerance, and the missions clearly do not.

The practical consequence is convenient: a US passport photo is the right shape for an Israeli application, and a photo studio anywhere in the world knows what "2 by 2" means even if it has never made an Israeli photo.

The requirement is for duplicate photographs — the same image printed twice, not two photos from different sessions. Print the same file twice.

Alongside the photos, missions ask for the original passport valid at least six months, a copy of its personal details page, proof of accommodation or an invitation, and in some posts a stamped addressed return envelope. The passport itself must generally be valid at least three months on the day of entry.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs' own application form carries a photo box in its top-right corner but states no size — the size comes from the mission, which is why checking the specific post handling your application is still worth two minutes.