Brazil Passport Photo Size & Requirements

If you're 5 or older and applying domestically, no. The Polícia Federal's own passport FAQ confirms the facial photograph is captured biometrically, in person, during your appointment — there's no self-upload spec to meet, and no photo to bring.

Two situations are different. A child under 5 must bring their own recent, physical 5×7cm colour photo on a white background, since the child can't always sit still for the in-person capture. And if you're applying through a Brazilian consulate abroad rather than a domestic Polícia Federal post, there's typically no in-person capture station there either, so you submit your own photo to the same 5×7cm spec.

If you're bringing a photo for a child under 5, or preparing one for a consular application, upload it above to check it against the 5×7cm spec: face and shoulders framed, chin-to-forehead around 31-36mm, plain white background, no reflections or shadows. For everyone else, there's nothing to submit — this is purely a reference for what the Polícia Federal is checking for when they take your photo at the appointment.

The Polícia Federal's own page confirms the in-person capture rule and the under-5 exception, but doesn't itself publish a background colour or numeric head-height figure. Those come from a Brazilian consular office's separate published specifications, which converge cleanly on the 5×7cm size. Re-verify against gov.br/pf directly if your situation is unusual.

This is the main case where a Brazilian application genuinely needs a photo you supply yourself, and it happens to be the hardest kind of photo to take. The Federal Police capture the image in person for everyone aged five and over; under five, you bring a 5 × 7 centimetre colour print to the appointment.

The requirements are gentler than an adult standard in one respect and stricter in another. Gentler, because an explicit exception is made for newborns photographed with their eyes closed — a concession very few countries offer. Stricter, because the face must not be partially covered by any accessory, ornament or adornment at all, which in practice means no bow, no hat, no hairband, no pacifier and no toy held up to keep the child’s attention. The photo also has to be recent enough that the child is still identifiable from it, which for a baby can mean a matter of weeks rather than months, and previously used passport photos are not accepted.

The approach that works for babies is to lay a plain white sheet flat on the floor or on a bed, put the child on their back on it, and shoot straight down from directly above with the camera parallel to the sheet. It removes the problem of supporting a head that cannot support itself, and it gives you an even, shadowless background. Do it near a window in daylight, not under a ceiling light that will cast your own shadow across the frame, and take a lot of frames — you are waiting for one where the eyes are open and the expression is neutral, and that one arrives by chance rather than on request.

The cropper above has an infant mode that swaps the standard crop guide for a lay-flat framing box, which is built for exactly this. There is more on the technique in the newborn and infant passport photo guide.

The Brazilian format is large — 5 by 7 centimetres, bigger than any European passport photo — and the consular guidance describes it as framing the face and shoulders together rather than cropping tight to the head.

A 31 to 36mm head inside a 70mm frame fills around half the height, which looks distinctly wide if you are used to the three-quarters framing of a British or German photo. That is correct for this format, not a mistake — the guide lines above are drawn to it. If your crop looks tight, it probably is.

The export is 900 × 1260 pixels, about 457 DPI at full size, which is comfortably above what any photo counter needs. Neither source consulted publishes a DPI minimum or a digital file-size cap, so none is quoted here.

The second case where you supply your own photo is a consular application. A Brazilian consulate abroad generally has no in-person biometric capture station, so the self-submitted photo requirement that domestic applicants have been relieved of still applies there in full — same 5 × 7cm size, white background, chin-to-forehead between 31 and 36mm, face and shoulders in frame.

Two specific exclusions are worth noting for this route. No glasses with reflections, and no dark or thick frames — a stricter line on eyewear than the domestic in-person capture takes. And no previously used passport photos, meaning the spare prints from your last renewal cannot be recycled.

This is also the situation where 5 × 7cm becomes awkward, because it is not a size photo counters outside Brazil keep as a preset. Bring a file cropped to 5 × 7cm and ask for it to be printed at exactly that size with no further cropping, or print a sheet of copies using the option under the download button and cut them yourself.