Morocco Passport Photo Requirements & Guidelines

A Morocco passport photo looks standard — 35 × 45 mm, plain light background, neutral face — but the Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nationale (DGSN) applies it with tighter tolerances than most. The head must sit in a narrow 32–36 mm band, and the expression has to be genuinely neutral: even a slight smile is a frequent rejection.

In other words, the usual "close enough" crop that passes elsewhere often fails for Morocco's biometric passport. This guide covers the exact spec and the specific things that get Moroccan photos refused.

The specification, at a glance

The tight head band — where most crops fail

Morocco's head-size window is narrow: 32–36 mm from chin to crown, roughly 71–80% of the frame. That's a tighter band than many countries, and an approximate crop — a face slightly too big or too small, or stretched to fit — is explicitly a reason for non-conformity.

This is the hardest part to nail by eye when you're trimming a phone photo. Rather than crop-and-hope, you can create your Morocco passport photo and have the head height measured into that 32–36 mm band from the original image.

The neutral-face rule is strict

This is Morocco's other common rejection. The expression must be genuinely neutral — mouth closed, no smile, both eyes fully open and looking straight at the lens, head straight with no tilt. Even a slight smile is frequently refused, so keep your face completely flat, not "pleasant."

Hair must not fall across the face or eyes, and your gaze must be level and forward.

Background and lighting

Plain and light — white is safest

Morocco asks for a plain, uniform, light background. White is the safest and most widely accepted; light grey is also fine. Avoid patterns, texture, objects, and any shadow behind your head.

Watch the colour cast

A Morocco-specific gotcha: warm, yellowish lighting is a common fault. Indoor bulbs throw a yellow cast that makes the photo non-conforming. Use soft, even, neutral-white light from the front, and avoid overhead lighting that drops shadows under the eyes, nose, and chin.

Glasses and head coverings

Glasses

Best removed. The strictest DGSN guidance is to take glasses off for passport and CNIE photos. If you keep them, lenses must be clear and untinted, with no glare, and the frames must not cross your eyes — but removing them is the reliable choice.

Head coverings

Non-religious hats and caps are not allowed. A headscarf or hijab is permitted for religious reasons, provided the full face — forehead, cheeks and chin — is visible, the scarf is a plain single colour, and it casts no shadow on the face.

Printed photo and applying

Morocco's biometric passport is applied for in person — at a local authority in Morocco, or by appointment at a consulate abroad (consular registration required). You submit printed 35 × 45 mm colour photos taken within the last six months.

There's no clearly documented public self-upload photo portal; where a digital file is requested it's typically a JPEG of a few hundred KB, but treat that as unverified and prioritise clean, correctly sized prints.

How Morocco compares

Morocco's 35 × 45 mm light-background format is shared across the region and Europe, but its tight head band and strict no-smile rule make it less forgiving than most — the same photo that passes a looser country can be refused here. The frame travels; the tolerances don't. If you're preparing photos for more than one country, our passport photo tool for 150+ countries applies each country's own rules to the same source image.

The short version

A Morocco passport photo is 35 × 45 mm on a plain light background — but with a tight 32–36 mm head, a strictly neutral expression (no smile), glasses off, and no warm colour cast. Get the crop and the flat expression right, taken within six months, and you've cleared what Morocco rejects most.