Spain Visa Photo — 35×45 mm, White Background, No Glasses

Which Size and Background Apply to the Spain Visa Photo?

For a Spanish Schengen visa application the photo is a **35×45 mm portrait biometric frame and the background must be white**. The consular pages of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs describe the photo as "taken against a white, light, clear, uniform background"; frames with a dark background or with an object or another person visible behind the head are refused, and dark or reflective glasses plus garments concealing the oval of the face are banned. The shared Schengen frame lives on the Schengen visa photo page, and the technical background of the size is covered in the 35×45 mm guide.

35×45 mm corresponds to **413 × 531 pixels** in a 300 dpi print. The legal basis is the EU Visa Code: Article 13 of Regulation 810/2009 requires a photograph and ten fingerprints as biometric identifiers, and rules that the technical requirements for the photograph follow ICAO Doc 9303. So size and technical quality are common across the EU; Spain's preference for a "white background" is a **national choice inside that frame**, not a departure from it.

Spain Names a Colour, Germany Wants Contrast — Which Background Wins?

Two countries under the same regulation asking for different background colours looks like a contradiction. It is not. The 8th edition of ICAO Doc 9303 defers portrait quality criteria to ISO/IEC 39794-5 and **prescribes no single background colour**: it only requires that no portion of the background be printed fully white, that detail survive in dark shadow regions, and that the portrait separate from the background. That gap leaves every member state room to pick a tone in its own template.

The practical consequence is not symmetric, as is often assumed: the difference runs **one way only**. A frame shot on white can also serve the Germany visa photo, provided hair and skin tone separate clearly enough from the background — because Germany asks for a measurable outcome, not a colour by name. The reverse does not hold: a grey-background frame will not pass the Spanish file, because the BLS rule names the colour as **white**. So for anyone filing both, white is the safer base; the single exception is light or near-white hair, where a white background weakens contrast and neutral grey is safer for Germany. Countries that accept both tones, such as the Greece visa photo, leave the choice entirely open. vesikalik.com.tr produces a separate output at each country's size from the same shot and assesses the background in the check report; it does not, however, alter the background tone on its own — the correct tone has to be there at capture time.

How Is the Photo Checked at the BLS Appointment?

Spain's Schengen and national visa applications in Türkiye are collected at **BLS International** centres; as the official partner of the Spanish Embassy the centre operates in Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya, Ankara and Gaziantep (the portal is split into two regions). The photo rules published on the centre's short-stay tourist page form a measurable list: compliance with the ICAO norm, a **white background**, a photo no more than **3 months** old, an untilted portrait shot (both edges of the face clearly visible), a clear forehead and face — the eyebrow ends must show below hair or a headscarf —, a close-up of head and upper shoulders so **the face takes up 70-80% of the frame**, sharp focus, and **no photos with glasses**.

On the process side, the centre's own notice states that an application may be lodged at the earliest 90 days before the intended departure date and recommends applying at least 15 days ahead. Its fee list shows US$106 for a tourist application, US$53 for ages 6-12, no fee under 6, and US$41 for nationals of certain visa-facilitation countries; a US$20 service charge is added per application and payment is taken in cash. These figures are the dollar equivalent of the EU's €90/€45 structure and move with the exchange rate — **the centre notice valid on appointment day prevails**. Other country applications are collected in the visa photo guide.

What Does Spain's 3-Month Freshness Rule Change?

The EU Schengen visa policy frame and almost every member state say "within the last 6 months" for the photo; the photo rules on Spain's Türkiye channel say the frame must be **no more than 3 months old**. That is the most practical warning on this page: a photo taken four or five months ago that passed for a neighbouring country can be handed back on freshness grounds in a Spanish file. The rule is not a detail — it is a threshold that can drop the file into "incomplete documents" status on appointment day.

The other recurring rejection reasons can be read straight off the centre's list: glasses (glare or not), eyebrow ends hidden under hair or a headscarf, a tilted head that loses one edge of the face, shadow on the background or a visible object behind the head, and a face falling outside the 70-80% band. A note for anyone hunting a millimetre band: Spain publishes no fixed head-height range like Germany's 32-36 mm band — what binds here is the face ratio and the ICAO norm.

Is the Photo the Same for Schengen C and Spain's National D Visa?

Stays up to 90 days for tourism, business, conferences, family and friend visits, sea transit and EU/EEA spouse applications fall under **Schengen Type C**. Longer stays belong to Spain's **national D visa** family, which BLS also collects at the same centres: student (SSU/SLU), non-working residence, residence and work, internship, self-employment, highly qualified professional, intra-corporate transfer, real-estate investment, training/research residence and the **digital nomad visa**. That last group comes out of Spain's Law 14/2013 entrepreneurship framework and makes the country a distinct target for remote workers inside Schengen.

The critical photo point: **the white-background 35×45 mm biometric frame underpins both routes**, but the quantity and the extra document list for national D applications vary by visa type — the checklist on the centre's page for that visa type prevails, and no invented count should be assumed. Other applications share the same 35×45 mm size: the UK visa uses it but with a different digital-upload logic, and for domestic documents the passport photo guide is separate. Producing separate outputs for several targets from one shot is both faster and safer than solving background and ratio differences one by one.