Nepal Passport Photo Size — You Don't Bring One

You do not bring a photo. Nepal passport photo rules read off the issuing authority's own page, checked 2026-08-26.

You do not bring a photo.

You are photographed at the enrollment centre. Missions abroad do the same: “Photographs will be taken at the Embassy on the day of your appointment.”

What other sites get wrong

Each of these is repeated across commercial photo sites. We checked the authority's own page and could not confirm any of them.

“A Nepali passport photo is 35 × 45 mm.”

That was the machine-readable passport era. Under the current e-passport you are photographed at the enrollment centre and bring nothing — unless the applicant is under 5.

What gets a Nepal photo rejected

This authority publishes in Nepali. Where we have the original wording we quote it; the rest is our English rendering of the same page. These are the reasons applications actually come back — more often than a wrong measurement.

during your biometrics, you will have to remove a.) jewelry on your face neck, ears, b.) makeup, c.) tika (bindi). Your hair must also be tied so that your ears are visible.
टिका नलाएको — no tika. “Photo with tika will not be accepted.”
नाक/कानमा मुन्द्रा वा अन्य गहना नलाएको — no nose or ear jewellery
कपालमा हेयरविन/काँटा नलगाएको — no hair clips or pins, and hair not tied up
दाँत नदेखिएको, मुख राम्रोसँग बन्द गरेको — teeth not showing, mouth closed
फोटोमा कतै छायाँ (shadow) नभएको — no shadows anywhere in the photo
रातो आँखा (Red Eye) नभएको — no red-eye

How Nepal compares, one rule at a time

Each page below takes a single rule and shows what every authority writes about it, in their own words. This is where Nepal lands on each.

Can you smile in a passport photo? — Only part of it is written down
Can you wear jewellery or makeup in a passport photo? — Not allowed
How old can a passport photo be? — Not stated

Which route applies to you

Ordinary route

You do not bring a photo.

You are photographed at the enrollment centre. Missions abroad do the same: “Photographs will be taken at the Embassy on the day of your appointment.”

There is no printed specification for this route, and none is missing from our data — the authority does not publish one, because you never supply a photo.

Children under 5

You bring 2 printed photos, 35 × 45 mm.

Children under 5 and newborns cannot be photographed live at the centre, so a print is brought instead — the Department gives this as the reason.

Print size	35 × 45 mmofficial wording: “आकार (Size):- 45mm x 35mm”
Photos required	2
Head height	70–80 % of photo heightwithin the ICAO 70–80% rule
Eye line	No official specification
Background	सादा सेतो रङ्ग (plain white)
Resolution	No official specification
Digital file	No official specification

Crop to spec and build a print sheet

You hand printed photos over the counter.

Open the tool with this standard loaded →

Can you just use the ICAO standard?

Nepal matches ICAO Doc 9303 (head = 70–80% of image height), so a standard ICAO crop is accepted.

The 70–80% figure comes from one paragraph of ICAO Doc 9303 Part 3, and it is measured against the passport page rather than your print — what Doc 9303 actually says, quoted in full.

Where official sources disagree

These are not errors on our side. Both pages below are official, and they say different things.

Head height

अनुहारको भाग ७०% (70%) — Embassy of Nepal, Tokyo (jp.nepalembassy.gov.np)
only 70% face coverage — Embassy of Nepal, Canberra (au.nepalembassy.gov.np)
face filling approximately 80% of the frame — Embassy of Nepal, London (uk.nepalembassy.gov.np)

Sources and what we could not verify

राहदानीका लागि कस्तो तस्बिर आवश्यक पर्छ — Department of Passports, Nepal nepalpassport.gov.np checked 2026-08-26

also: nepalpassport.gov.np · us.nepalembassy.gov.np

not verified: the photo rule for the DoFE foreign employment permit · the Nepali FAQ wording on make-up, jewellery and tika — the answers sit behind an accordion we could not render (checked 2026-08-29). 2026-08-31: the three lines we had were in no source we could read and understated the rule (we wrote "no explicit rule is given" for tika; the embassy requires its removal), so they were replaced by the embassy wording. The Nepali original is still worth quoting if the accordion is ever retrieved.

Baby photo for e-Passport — Embassy of Nepal, Tokyo jp.nepalembassy.gov.np checked 2026-08-26

also: au.nepalembassy.gov.np · bd.nepalembassy.gov.np

not verified: an eye line figure — none is given · resolution: the rule only says “high resolution” · whether “70% face” means height or area

Questions people actually ask

Do I need to bring a photo for a Nepal passport application?

No. You are photographed at the enrollment centre. Missions abroad do the same: “Photographs will be taken at the Embassy on the day of your appointment.”

What size is a Nepal passport photo?

35 × 45 mm applies only to one track (under-5). For the ordinary route, you do not bring a photo.

Why do official pages give different answers?

They genuinely disagree. On head height: Embassy of Nepal, Tokyo says “अनुहारको भाग ७०% (70%)”; Embassy of Nepal, Canberra says “only 70% face coverage”; Embassy of Nepal, London says “face filling approximately 80% of the frame”. We show both rather than picking one.