Schengen visa photo requirements: 35 x 45 mm, head 32 to 36 mm

A Schengen visa photo is 35 x 45 mm, a portrait rectangle with a plain, light background and a head of 32 to 36 mm. That is the same shape as a UK, Irish or Australian passport photo, which makes it easy to assume that any of them will do. They will not always: the head range, the background rule and the glasses rule all differ between those documents, and the Schengen area is a group of countries rather than one authority.

This page puts every number the Schengen visa photo has into one table. The figures were read from the France-Visas FAQ named below on 17 September 2026, and they are the same ones getPNG’s passport photo maker uses. That is the French visa portal, so it speaks for France. getPNG crops and places the photograph at these sizes. It does not judge the biometrics, and nothing here is a promise that your photo will be accepted.

The table

Every row that has a number comes from one authority’s page, checked on 17 September 2026. The last two rows are blank on purpose. If the application you are filling in asks for a pixel size or a maximum file size, it says so at the upload step, and that figure belongs to the portal, not to this page.

The page also gives no exact colour. “Plain and light” is the whole rule, so this page does not name one. Some consulates and visa centres do name a colour, and the colours they name are not all the same, which is why the checklist of the one you apply through outranks any general table, this one included.

What the numbers add up to

Three sums on the table turn it into a picture you can aim at.

The head fills about 71 to 80 percent of the height. The photo is 45 mm tall and the head is 32 to 36 mm, so the head is 32 / 45 = 71 percent at the smallest and 36 / 45 = 80 percent at the largest. For comparison, the UK asks for 29 to 34 mm in the same 45 mm photo, about 64 to 76 percent, so a UK crop is a little loose for a Schengen visa, and a Schengen crop is a little tight for the UK. The Indian passport asks for 36 to 38.3 mm, which is 80 to 85 percent and stricter than either.

Little is left for everything else. The head takes 32 to 36 mm of the 45 mm, so 9 to 13 mm remain for the space above the crown, the neck and the tops of the shoulders. The page does not say how much of that must be above the head, so this page does not either. What it does mean is that a Schengen visa photo is a tight head-and-shoulders crop, and one taken from far away has to be cropped hard to reach the range.

The shape is 7 to 9. 35 x 45 mm is a ratio of 0.778 wide to tall. A photo cropped for the Chinese visa, at 33 x 48 mm, is 0.6875, which is narrower, and a US square is 1. None of them can be turned into another by scaling, so crop each from the original photograph.

Cropping for 35 x 45 mm

The practical trouble is the head size. From arm’s length or from three metres away, the head is small in the frame, and cropping in tight to reach 32 mm just gives a soft picture, because the pixels were never there.

Work backwards from the head instead. Suppose the head measures 900 pixels from chin to crown on your original:

• the head must fill 71 to 80 percent of the cropped height, so the cropped photo is between 900 / 0.80 = about 1,125 and 900 / 0.71 = about 1,270 pixels tall;
• the width is then 35 / 45 of that, about 875 to 985 pixels;
• if the application wants a smaller file, that crop is scaled down to it, which is a reduction, so the photo stays sharp.

For a print there is a second sum. At 300 dots per inch, 35 x 45 mm is about 413 x 531 pixels, and a head of 32 to 36 mm is about 378 to 425 pixels. A head only a few hundred pixels tall in the original cannot make a sharp print at the official size, whatever the crop does.

You do not need to do these sums yourself, because the passport photo maker draws the allowed band and you move the photo until the crown and chin sit inside it. They tell you how much picture you must have taken.

Plain and light

The rule is two words, and each needs care.

Plain means one even surface. A white wall lit from one side has a grey half, and the shadow of your head and shoulders falls on it if you stand against it. Stand about a metre in front of the wall so the shadow falls on the floor, and face a window so the light is even across the wall and your face. A curtain, a door frame, a poster or a picture hook in the frame is not plain.

Light is a range rather than a colour. A pale wall can look light by eye and photograph as yellow under a warm lamp or grey in a dim room, so use daylight and look at the result on a screen before you commit to it. If your consulate names a colour, match that one. If it names none, an even pale wall is the safest reading of what the page says.

Do not paint the background afterwards. A replaced background is an edit, and an ID photo is checked for exactly that. A cutout tool is the right tool for a sticker or a product picture and the wrong one here; passport photo backgrounds explains why, and what “plain” means to the people looking at the photo. It also covers the Schengen visa and the colours different consulates ask for in more detail.

Glasses, hair and expression

The one rule on the page is that the eyes must not be covered. In practice that is three things you can check on the picture: no tint on the lenses, no frame edge crossing the eye, and no bright patch of glare over the pupil. It also applies to hair, so push a fringe aside until both eyes are clear.

The practical advice is still to take glasses off for the ten seconds it takes, because glare is the commonest way to fail the condition and it depends on a window or lamp that you cannot easily move. If you wear them every day and the photograph without them would not look like you, take several shots with them on, at different angles to the window, and keep the one with the clearest lenses.

Beyond that, the usual habits for an ID photo apply: look straight at the camera, keep a neutral expression with the mouth closed, keep both eyes open, and have nobody else in the frame. The consulate’s checklist is the source for how each of those is worded.

One portal, many consulates

The French passport has its own photo rules, which are stricter than the visa page in two places: a background that is light but not white, and a head measured to the top of the skull. They are in French passport photo requirements.

The word Schengen covers a group of countries that issue one kind of short-stay visa. You apply through the consulate of the country you are visiting, or through a visa centre it uses, and that office publishes its own checklist. Most of them follow the international pattern that passports use, which is why the figures here look like those of the UK or Australia, but “most follow it” is not “all say the same”.

Three habits keep you out of trouble:

1. Find the checklist of the office you apply to, not the first result for “Schengen photo”. It may be from a different country.
2. Where it disagrees with this page, it wins. The France-Visas page is the source here because it is the one getPNG’s maker was built from, not because it outranks another country’s.
3. Read what the upload step says. A portal that takes a digital photo states its own pixel and file limits, and the page above says nothing about them.

If the portal does ask for a file under a size limit, compressing an image to an exact size explains why the quality steps down while the pixel size stays fixed.

Taking one at home

The photograph is the same job as for any other 35 x 45 mm document:

1. Find a plain, pale wall with nothing on it and stand about a metre in front of it.
2. Face a window in daylight, on an overcast day if you can, with no flash and no ceiling light.
3. Turn off portrait mode, beauty filters and skin smoothing, and use the rear camera.
4. Have somebody take it from about two metres away at eye height, with head and shoulders in the frame and clear space all round, because a tight crop needs plenty of picture to start from.
5. Crop to 35 x 45 mm with the head between 32 and 36 mm.
6. For a print, print at 100 percent with no border and no fit to page, then measure the cut photo with a ruler.

How to take a passport photo at home has the detail on each of those steps.

What the tool does, and what it does not

getPNG crops and places the photograph at the official size and shows you where the head sits against the range the France-Visas page gives. That is the part a person is worst at doing by eye.

It does not judge the photograph. Whether your expression reads as neutral, whether the light across your face is even and whether the wall counts as plain and light enough are decided by the authority that receives the application, and the checklist of the office you apply to is the only source that settles it. No website can promise your photo will be accepted, and one that does is telling you something it has no way of knowing.

For the same checks on the other documents getPNG knows, the passport photo requirements table lists twelve of them with the official source for each. UK passport photo requirements works through the other 35 x 45 mm document with a looser head range, and Chinese visa photo requirements sets out a third shape. Before you upload any ID photo to a site, read whether it is safe to upload photos online.

Questions

What size is a Schengen visa photo?

35 x 45 mm, the same portrait rectangle as most European passports. It is not the 2 x 2 inch square of the US, and it is not the 33 x 48 mm of the Chinese visa. A photo cropped for either of those needs a new crop from the original, because the head sits in a different place in each shape.

How big should the head be in a Schengen visa photo?

The France-Visas page gives 32 to 36 mm from the bottom of the chin to the top of the head. In a 45 mm tall photo that is a head filling roughly 71 to 80 percent of the height. Too small is the usual fault, caused by taking the photo from too far away and then cropping tight.

What background does a Schengen visa photo need?

The France-Visas page says plain and light, and no more than that. Some consulates and visa centres name a colour, and the colours they name differ, so read the checklist of the one you apply through. Whichever colour it is, the wall must be even, with no pattern, no shadow and nothing hanging on it.

Can I wear glasses in a Schengen visa photo?

The page requires that the eyes are not covered. That rules out dark or tinted lenses, frames across the pupil and glare that hides the eye. Glare is hard to avoid at home with a window or lamp in front of you, so if you can take them off for the photograph, that removes the risk.

Is there a separate rule for each Schengen country?

The figures here are from the French visa portal, and getPNG uses them for its Schengen visa size. A visa for another Schengen state is handled by that state's consulate or its visa centre, which publishes its own photo checklist. Where they differ from this page, the checklist for your application is the source that settles it.

Does getPNG make a Schengen visa photo that will be accepted?

It crops and places your photo at 35 x 45 mm and shows the head against the 32 to 36 mm range. It does not judge the photograph. Whether the expression, the light and the background are acceptable is decided by the authority that receives it, and no website can promise the outcome.