Libya Passport Photo Requirements & Guidelines

A Libya passport photo differs from the global norm in two ways that are easy to miss. The size is 40 × 60 mm — the tall format, not the widespread 35 × 45 mm rectangle — and the background is usually a plain light grey rather than white. Shoot a standard white-background rectangle and you've missed on both counts.

Libya doesn't publish a detailed technical photo guide online, so the figures below are the industry-standard consensus used by photo services and consulates. Treat the exact millimetres as best-available rather than a downloadable government table — but the two headline differences, the tall frame and the grey background, are consistent across sources.

The specification, at a glance

The tall 40 × 60 frame

The 40 × 60 mm size is taller and narrower than most passport photos, and it's the first thing to get right. A photo sized to 35 × 45 — the format most people default to — is simply the wrong shape and gets rejected. When you crop a phone photo to 40 × 60, expect more vertical space around the face than you're used to.

The head should be about 38 mm chin to crown with roughly 6 mm of clearance above it. Because the frame is larger, the head-to-frame ratio *feels* different, and heads often end up too small or too large. Rather than guess, you can create your Libya passport photo and let the crop and head height be measured from the original.

Grey, not white

The second difference is the backdrop. Libya's standard is generally a plain light grey, though some sources also accept white or off-white. Where guidance is ambiguous, grey is the safest choice — it's the most consistently cited, and a genuinely neutral light grey with even lighting and no shadows will satisfy the requirement.

Whatever the shade, the background must be uniform: no gradient, no shadow behind the head, no texture. If you can't produce an even grey at home, replacing the background digitally is more reliable than fighting your lighting.

Glasses off, expression neutral

Glasses are not permitted unless medically required with documentation — and then only with no glare and the frames clear of the eyes. For most people that means removing them. Keep a neutral expression, mouth closed, both eyes open and facing the camera, head centred and not tilted.

Print and digital

The printed photo

A 40 × 60 mm colour print, light-grey background, head ~38 mm, taken within the last six months. This is the deliverable for an in-person application — Libya's Passport and Nationality Authority doesn't run a documented public photo-upload portal.

If a digital file is requested

Where a digital copy is asked for, aim for a sharp, correctly proportioned 40 × 60 image; third-party guidance cites around 300 DPI and a file kept under ~300 KB. Treat those as practical targets rather than an official Libyan standard, and prioritise a clean, correctly sized image.

How Libya compares

Libya's 40 × 60 mm tall format is shared with countries like Laos and Kyrgyzstan, but the grey background sets it apart from most of North Africa and the Gulf, where white or (in Kuwait's case) blue is the norm. The frame is regional; the background is Libya's own. If you're preparing photos for several countries, our passport photo tool for 150+ countries applies each country's own size and background to the same source image.

The short version

A Libya passport photo is the tall 40 × 60 mm format with a ~38 mm head, glasses off, on a plain light-grey background — not the white rectangle most people default to. Get the proportion and the grey backdrop right, taken within six months, and you've handled the two things Libya actually rejects photos for.