USCIS Now Takes Your Green Card Photo: When You Still Need Prints (2026)

Short answer: if you are applying for a green card from inside the United States, you no longer supply the card photo at all. Since December 12, 2025, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) takes it at your biometrics appointment, and the agency’s own policy says it “will not use or reuse self-submitted photographs.” If you are applying from abroad through a U.S. consulate, nothing changed: you still bring two printed 2x2 inch photos to the interview.

Which of those is you decides everything, so here is the whole picture by route.

Which green card route are you on?

Your situation	Photo you supply
Form I-485 (adjustment of status), filed on or after Dec 12, 2025	None. USCIS photographs you at the biometrics appointment
Form I-90 (replace or renew a card), filed on or after Dec 12, 2025	None. Same appointment capture
I-485 or I-90 filed before Dec 12, 2025	The old rule applied: two printed 2x2 photos in the packet
Consular processing (Form DS-260, interview at an embassy)	Two identical printed 2x2 photos, on photo-quality paper
Diversity Visa lottery entry	A digital upload: square JPEG, 600x600 pixels, 240 KB or smaller

What actually changed in December 2025

USCIS policy alert PA-2025-29 (December 12, 2025) rewrote the photograph section of the Policy Manual. We read the alert PDF and the updated chapter (1 USCIS-PM C.2) on August 12, 2026, and two lines carry all the weight:

1. “USCIS will not use or reuse self-submitted photographs.” The photo that prints on your green card comes from the Application Support Center (ASC) appointment, where they already take your fingerprints and signature.
2. Photo reuse is not permitted for I-485, I-90, N-400, or N-600. Other forms let USCIS reuse a biometric photo taken within the last 36 months; these four always get a fresh capture. Even if you had biometrics taken last month for a work permit, your I-485 appointment takes a new photo.

The practical consequence: the appointment is the photo. There is no upload, no retake queue, and no way to swap in a better shot. Show up rested, glasses off, and treat the notice date as a hard deadline, because a missed ASC appointment is now the main way a card photo gets delayed.

The checklist that hasn’t caught up

Here is the part that keeps the old advice alive. When we downloaded the current Form I-485 instructions from uscis.gov on August 12, 2026, the edition date was still January 20, 2025, and its evidence checklist still opens with “Photographs. You must…” That edition predates the policy change, and USCIS has not reissued it yet.

So which one wins? The policy alert says its guidance “is controlling and supersedes any related prior guidance.” The photos will not be used for your card either way. If you are the kind of filer who follows the printed checklist to the letter, including two prints is harmless and costs a couple of dollars. If you skip them, the policy is on your side. What you should not do is pay studio prices for photos whose only destination is a filing cabinet.

Applying from abroad: prints are still required

The December change is a USCIS policy, and consular processing is run by the State Department. If your green card path goes through Form DS-260 and an immigrant visa interview at a U.S. embassy or consulate, travel.state.gov still requires two identical 2x2 inch photos, printed on photo-quality paper, handed in at the interview. Diversity Visa selectees bring the same two prints to their interview, even though the initial lottery entry was a digital upload.

Those photos you do make yourself, and the spec is the standard U.S. 2x2: white background, head between 1 inch and 1 3/8 inches chin to crown, taken in the last 6 months, no glasses. Our US visa photo tool outputs both the digital file and a print-ready 4x6 sheet for exactly this case, and the green card photo page covers the remaining self-supply situations, like a pre-change filing that still references mailed photos.

The one-sentence version

Domestic I-485 or I-90 filed since December 12, 2025: USCIS takes the photo, save your money. Consular DS-260 or a DV interview: two printed 2x2 photos, no exceptions. Everything else: check your form’s current instructions, because the per-form list is what controls.

Sources: USCIS Policy Alert PA-2025-29 (PDF), USCIS Policy Manual, 1 USCIS-PM C.2, Biometrics Collection, travel.state.gov photo requirements. All three checked on August 12, 2026.