Polish passport photo

Source: Gov.pl — Zdjęcie do dowodu lub paszportu (Polish government citizen-services portal) — read 2026-07-28.

Glasses: Permitted if the eyes are clearly visible, the frames do not cover the eyebrows, and there is no reflection of light in the lenses.

Head coverings: Permitted for religious reasons provided the face remains visible, with the full oval of the face and the ear line exposed.

Expression & pose: A natural facial expression with no exaggerated look, and the mouth closed.

Children & infants: Children under 5 may be photographed with closed eyes, an open mouth or an unnatural expression.

Crop a photo to the official Poland 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 white, evenly lit, without shadows or decorative elements — 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 70–80% figure.
6. Download the photo. If the result would exceed the 2.4 MB upload limit, it is compressed to fit before saving.

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

• Background not white, or with shadows or decorative elements
• Photo older than six months
• Eyebrows or the ear line hidden by a head covering
• Frames covering the eyebrows, or light reflecting off the lenses
• Exaggerated or non-neutral facial expression

A Polish Passport Photo is 35 × 45 mm. The head must fill 70–80% of the image height. The background must be white, evenly lit, without shadows or decorative elements. Digital uploads must be no larger than 2.4 MB. The photo must have been taken within the last 6 months.

Gov.pl's own citizen-services portal states the printed 35 × 45 mm format directly, together with the 70–80% face proportion and the six-month recency rule. A separate digital pathway exists only for online applications made on behalf of children under 12, where a minimum of 768 × 1004 px and a 2.5 MB ceiling apply; standard adult applications remain paper-based and are submitted in person, so no general pixel or file-size figure is published for adults and the digital 'required' field is left null rather than guessed.

A correctly framed photo still gets rejected if the file is too large. Poland caps uploads at 2.4 MB . The cropper above compresses to fit automatically when you download. If you already have a correctly framed photo and only need it resized, the compress tool will hit an exact target without touching the framing.