Burundi Residence Card Photo — Exact Official Requirements

A photo for your Burundi residence card (carte de séjour) must conform to the national biometric standard enforced by the Police Nationale du Burundi (PNB) migration service. Getting the photo right the first time matters: the PNB office does not offer on-site retakes, so arriving with a non-compliant image means a wasted trip and a delayed permit. Our service automatically crops and calibrates your photo to every dimension of that standard — you see a free watermarked preview before you pay a cent.

Burundi's residence permit follows the same photographic specification used for the national passport and visa. This is significant for foreign applicants: the carte de séjour is issued by the PNB migration directorate, not a consulate abroad, so the photo must be prepared before you arrive at the counter — unlike some countries where an officer takes the photo on the spot. The standard mandates a pure white background (#FFFFFF), which is stricter than the off-white or light-grey backgrounds accepted in several neighbouring East African states. Even a faintly cream or shadow-tinted background is grounds for rejection.

• Print size: 35 × 45 mm (digital equivalent: 413 × 531 px at 300 dpi)
• Background: plain white — #FFFFFF, no gradients, no shadows
• Face coverage: 70–80% of the total frame height
• Expression: neutral, mouth closed, eyes open and looking directly at the camera
• Glasses: permitted only if the eyes are fully visible with no tinted lenses and no glare on the glass
• Head coverings: not permitted except for documented religious reasons; the face must remain fully visible from forehead to chin
• Recency: photo must have been taken within the last six months
• Retouching: no digital alteration of facial features; normal brightness/contrast correction is acceptable

• Common reasons photos are rejected at the PNB migration office:
• Off-white or shadowed background — the most frequent cause; any colour cast behind the head fails the white-background rule
• Face too small in the frame — a common selfie or passport-photo-booth error; the face must occupy 70–80% of the frame height, not less
• Tinted or reflective glasses — sunglasses and lenses that obscure the iris are not accepted; standard clear prescription lenses are fine only when there is zero glare
• Head tilted or not centred — the PNB standard requires the head to be straight, centred, and with the eyes on the horizontal midline of the upper half of the image

To get your compliant photo, upload any clear, recent snapshot — a phone photo in good daylight works perfectly. The image is automatically resized to the exact 35×45 mm / 413×531 px format, the background is set to pure white, and the face position is checked against the 70–80% rule. You receive a free watermarked preview to confirm it looks right before any payment. If you submit the final file to the PNB and it is rejected for a technical photo reason, we redo it free or refund you in full — you only pay when you are confident the photo meets the standard.