If you wear glasses every day, taking them off for a photograph feels wrong - the picture does not look like you. It is still what almost every authority now requires.
Where glasses are banned outright
The United States removed glasses from passport photos in November 2016. The stated reason was blunt: a large share of rejected photos were being refused for glare, reflections or frames obscuring the eyes, and removing glasses eliminated the whole category.
The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and most Schengen countries have converged on the same position or something close to it. Some word it as an outright prohibition, some as "not recommended, and refused if there is any glare or obstruction", which in practice amounts to the same advice.
Why the rules tightened
Three things happen when glasses are in an ID photo, and all three interfere with automated face comparison.
Reflections. Any light source in front of you appears in the lens. Even a small highlight sitting over the pupil removes the eye from the comparison entirely.
Refraction. A strong prescription shifts the apparent position of the eye. The landmarks a system uses to measure a face move slightly, and the measurement is off by an amount nobody can see by eye.
Occlusion. Thick frames cross the eye region, and the frame edge is easy to mistake for an eyelid or an eyebrow.
At a border, the gate compares your live face against the chip. If you are wearing glasses in one and not the other, the comparison is already harder. Requiring bare eyes in the stored image removes one variable.
The medical exemption
Where glasses genuinely cannot be removed - after eye surgery, for example - most authorities have a route, but it is a documented one. Typically that means a signed medical note submitted with the application, and even then the requirements are strict: thin frames, no tint, no reflection, both eyes and both pupils clearly visible.
It is an exception granted on paper, not something to decide on your own at the point of taking the photo.
What about tinted or transition lenses?
No, in every case. Tinted lenses, sunglasses and photochromic lenses that have darkened in daylight are refused everywhere. If you are photographing near a window with transition lenses, they will have reacted before you notice.
Practical advice
- Take them off. It is the correct answer for nearly every document, and it removes any argument.
- Take them off a few minutes early. Glasses leave marks on the bridge of the nose, and a fresh red dent is visible in a close portrait.
- Keep your eyes fully open. People who wear glasses often squint slightly without them. Both eyes have to be open and the pupils visible.
- Contact lenses are fine, provided they are not coloured and do not change the apparent iris.
- If a document does permit glasses, light the face from a broad, soft source in front of you and tilt the head a fraction - most glare comes from a single hard light reflecting straight back.
IDShot checks that both eyes are open and unobstructed and flags reflections in the eye region, and each preset links to the authority's own wording on glasses - because this is one of the rules that has changed recently and may change again.
Requirements are changed by the authorities that publish them, and the official page is the only source that settles an argument. Each preset in IDShot links to that page, so you can confirm the current wording before you submit.