Spec Change Log — Requirements That Moved
Document photo specs that changed — India's 630×810 ICAO switch (Sept 2025), China's COVA window, UK file floors, US glasses ban — dates and sources.
Specs drift — and the drift is exactly why this site exists with dates on every card. This page tracks the requirement changes that matter, newest first, with what the rule was and what it became.
2025–2026
India passport → ICAO (1 September 2025). The headline change. Under the MEA GPSP 2.0 rollout, India retired the 2×2 in square it had shared with the US and adopted the ICAO portrait: 35×45 mm, exactly 630×810 px JPEG, ≈10–250 KB, face filling 80–85% of the photo. Missions abroad transitioned through late 2025 — a few consular channels still quote 51×51 mm during the changeover. Full India spec →
India e-visa — unchanged, and that’s the trap. The e-visa upload stayed square (≥350×350 px, 10–300 KB) even as the passport went rectangular. Applicants who learned “India is ICAO now” submit the wrong shape in the other channel.
US online passport renewal — digital channel normalized (2024–2025). The State Department’s online renewal portal made digital uploads a mainstream passport channel — same square frame and rules as the visa spec, enforced at upload.
Schengen portal fragmentation. The harmonized photo spec hasn’t moved — but its enforcement migrated to outsourced portals (VFS, BLS, TLScontact), each publishing its own pixel window and byte cap. “The Schengen spec” now means one photo plus N different upload rules.
Older changes still catching people out
China COVA pixel window (≈2020–2021). The online application’s 354–420 × 472–560 px window — a 3:4 shape wider than the 33×48 mm paper photo — quietly became the enforced spec for digital applications. Guides quoting only the paper size are half-right. Full China spec →
US glasses ban (1 November 2016). Glasses went from “allowed, no glare” to outright banned in passport and visa photos — still the most-quoted stale rule on the internet a decade later.
Australia glasses ban (1 July 2018). The Australian Passport Office followed the US two years later — glasses went from allowed to banned outright, a documented medical reason the only exception. Pre-2018 guides still quote the old “allowed” rule; the spec card in the lookup carries the current one.
UK file floor. The UK portal’s 50 KB minimum — unusual in a world of maximums — appeared with the online application system and still surprises people who over-compress.
DV lottery exactness. The 600×600 px square, ≤240 KB, ≤6 months photo has been stable for years — but it’s one of the strictest “exact pixel” specs anywhere, and scans of paper photos are explicitly rejected.
How to keep up
Every card in the lookup carries the date its spec was last verified against the linked authority. When a portal page and an older guide disagree, the portal is almost always the newer document — and the country pages note the known divergences. Spot a change we haven’t caught? Tell us with the authority’s link — corrections get folded into the next dataset review.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
How often do passport photo specs change?
Slowly at the paper level, fast at the portal level. Print sizes are stable for years (India's 2025 switch was the first big national change in a while), but upload windows, file caps and recency rules move whenever a portal is rebuilt. That's why every card here carries a verification date.
What was the biggest recent spec change?
India's move to the ICAO format on 1 September 2025: from the 2×2 in square shared with the US to 35×45 mm, exactly 630×810 px, with the face filling 80–85% of the frame. It made every older guide — and every older photo — obsolete overnight for passport applications.
If a site quotes different numbers than this one, who's right?
Check the date on both. A page quoting 2×2 in for India was correct before September 2025 and wrong after; a page quoting the ICAO spec for China's digital upload is describing the paper rule, not the COVA window the portal enforces. The authority's own page — linked on every card — is the tiebreaker.