Passport photo for babies & children — every rule that's relaxed (2026)

The rule that matters most

For babies and toddlers most countries explicitly relax the adult passport-photo rules. The only requirements you can't skip:

• Eyes open and looking at the camera. The single rule no country waives.
• Face visible from chin to crown.No hat, no pacifier, no parent's hand in frame.
• Plain background. Same colour rule as adults — light grey or white per country spec.

Smiling, slightly parted lips, a small head tilt — all accepted for under-6s. The biometric face-matching algorithms know children change rapidly and apply looser thresholds.

The trick: white sheet on the floor

Lay your baby on their back on a plain white or light grey sheet. Stand over them and shoot straight down. This solves four problems at once:

1. Background is automatically uniform (the sheet)
2. Baby can't flop sideways (they're flat)
3. You can take 20+ frames quickly while they look up
4. Eyes naturally track your face directly above the camera

Tip: hold a small toy or your phone's torch beside the camera to keep eyes pointing up.

How many tries you'll need

Plan for 30-50 frames. Babies blink, look away, close their mouth, open it. AI software measures every frame in milliseconds and picks the best — that's the actual difference vs. doing it at the photographer (who gets 5-10 tries before babies cry).

Country-by-country age cutoffs for relaxed rules

• Netherlands: under 10 — face height relaxed to 19-30 mm (vs adult 26-30 mm), facial expression rules relaxed.
• Germany: under 10 — face height 27-30 mm (vs adult 32-36).
• UK: under 6 — eyes-open is the only strict rule.
• US: under 1 — closed eyes accepted if obviously a baby. Older infants need eyes open.
• France, Italy, Spain, Belgium: under 6 — relaxed expression + smaller face height window.

Take your child's passport photo at home — pick “child” in the country picker, our AI applies the relaxed rules automatically.