Austrian passport & ID photo

Source: Federal Chancellery of Austria — oesterreich.gv.at, Passbildkriterien — read 2026-07-28.

Glasses: Glasses may be worn only if they do not interfere with a clear, unambiguous view of the eyes.

Head coverings: Head coverings worn for religious reasons are permitted.

Expression & pose: Neutral expression, mouth closed, eyes uncovered, in a frontal shot with the head neither tilted nor turned; skin tone should appear as natural as possible.

Children & infants: Deviations from the standard pose are permitted only where the person's stage of development or a physical condition makes it otherwise impossible.

Crop a photo to the official Austria spec and check the head height as you go — free, and entirely in your browser.

1. Take or choose a photo shot straight on, from about arm's length or further, in even light with no shadow falling on the face or the wall behind it. Phone selfies taken close up distort the face and are a common rejection reason.
2. Stand far enough from the wall that you cast no shadow on it. The background needs to be plain, light colour — ideally grey — with sufficient contrast against the face and hair — the tool fills only the area outside your photo's edges, it does not replace the wall behind you.
3. Drop the photo into the tool above. Nothing is uploaded; the file is read directly by your browser.
4. Drag the blue marker to the very top of the head, including hair, and the red marker to the bottom of the chin. This is the measurement every official spec is written against.
5. Check the head-height readout against the official 67% figure.
6. Download the photo, or generate a print sheet if you need physical copies.

Drawn from the official guidance rather than guesswork. Most rejections are not about dimensions at all:

• Photo more than six months old
• Background not a plain light colour, or insufficient contrast with the face or hair
• Red-eye, damage, dirt, or unnatural colour
• Shadows on the face, or reflections
• Tilted or turned head
• Textured paper used instead of smooth, glossy paper

A Austrian Passport & ID Photo is 35 × 45 mm. The head, including hair, must fill 67% of the image height. The background must be plain, light colour — ideally grey — with sufficient contrast against the face and hair. The photo must have been taken within the last 6 months.

oesterreich.gv.at's own Passbildkriterien entry, maintained by the Federal Chancellery, is unusually precise for a government FAQ page: alongside the 35 × 45 mm print it states the head should take up 'etwa 2/3' (approximately two-thirds) of the image — recorded here as a 67% proportion — and gives a minimum eye-to-eye distance of 8 mm, a criterion not modelled by most other national specs in this table and not represented in this schema. Printing paper must be smooth and glossy with no visible surface texture. No digital pixel, DPI or file-size specification is published for online applications.