Cambodia e-Arrival Card Photo: Does It Need One, and How It Differs From Your eVisa Photo

The eVisa is the step that needs your photo

The photo belongs entirely to the eVisa. When you apply for the Cambodia eVisa — weeks before you travel — one of the items you upload is a recent passport-style headshot, and that image is what gets printed on the approved visa PDF. It is the face an officer compares you to at the counter. So the photo work happens at the visa stage, not the arrival stage, and it happens once.

Here is the entire eVisa photo spec in one breath. A recent color photo, taken in the last 6 months, passport-style, against a plain white or off-white background. Full face visible and centered, eyes open and looking at the lens, neutral expression with no smile and no teeth. No glasses, no sunglasses, no hats or head coverings except those worn daily for religious reasons. Submit it as a JPEG, under 2 MB, ideally 600×600 pixels or larger and roughly square. That is the whole list, and a phone photo against a white wall in daylight meets every line of it, which is how most American applicants do it.

Two file traps catch Americans specifically, and both belong to the eVisa, not the arrival card. The first is HEIC: recent iPhones save photos in Apple's HEIC format by default, and the eVisa upload wants a standard JPEG — switch the camera to "Most Compatible" or convert in the Photos app first. The second is an oversized original straight off a high-resolution camera, which can run well over 2 MB before you crop it. A square crop around your head and shoulders fixes both at once. The printed passport equivalent is 4×6 cm, about 1.6×2.4 inches, but you never print it — the eVisa is fully digital, so pixels and file size are what the upload checks.

The composition rules are where the avoidable rejections live, and they are all about giving the system a clean, unobstructed face. The top auto-flags are a smile, glasses of any kind, an off-white or colored wall, shadows thrown behind your head by a ceiling light, a hat, and resolution under 600 pixels. Each one is easy to dodge once you know it is on the list: face a window so the daylight is even, stand far enough from the wall that no shadow falls on it, take the glasses off, and shoot five or six frames so you have a clean one to pick from. None of this applies to the arrival card, because the arrival card never sees your face.

If the file mechanics are where you get stuck — the pixel math, the under-2-MB ceiling, the JPEG-versus-HEIC question — our deep dive on Cambodia eVisa photo size and file format for Americans walks through every number. Get the photo right once at the eVisa stage and you never think about it again, because the arrival card will never ask for it.

How the two forms differ, side by side

The cleanest way to keep them straight is to think of them as two different jobs done at two different times. The eVisa is your permission to enter Cambodia — the big step, done well ahead of the trip, the one with the photo and the fee. The e-Arrival Card is your arrival declaration — the light step, done in the final week, the one that is pure typing. Same passport feeding both, but different purpose and different moment.

• Photo: the eVisa needs one headshot; the e-Arrival Card needs none. This is the single biggest difference and the source of the whole confusion.
• Timing: the eVisa is approved in 3–5 days, so you apply weeks ahead. The e-Arrival Card is filed within the 7 days before you land and is tied to a specific flight, so you cannot file it months early.
• What you upload: the eVisa takes a photo and a passport bio-page scan. The e-Arrival Card takes no uploads at all — every field is typed in.
• What you get back: the eVisa is delivered as a printable PDF by email. The e-Arrival Card returns a confirmation with a QR code you save to your phone.
• What an officer does with it: your eVisa photo is what the officer compares to your face at the counter. Your e-Arrival QR code is what the officer scans to pull your typed declaration.

Because both forms read your name and passport number, the one place they overlap is name discipline. Type your name on each exactly as it is printed on your US passport — same spelling, same order, including any middle name shown there. If your eVisa says "Jonathan" and your arrival card says "Jon," that mismatch is the kind of thing that slows the kiosk down. The photo lives only on the eVisa, but the name has to read identically on both.

One field on the arrival card does trip Americans up, and it is worth flagging because it has nothing to do with photos. The form uses a day-month-year date layout in places, so 06/07 reads as June 7th, not July 6th — get your arrival date backward and it sits a month off your flight. The same care applies to your date of birth. Our breakdown of the information you need for the Cambodia e-Arrival Card covers that date trap and every other field you type in.

Doing both in the right order

You need both, and the order matters. First the eVisa, weeks ahead: this is where the photo lives, where the fee is paid, and where a flagged headshot can cost you a day if you rush it. Once that is approved and the PDF is in your inbox, the photo job is done for good. Then, in the 7 days before you fly, you file the e-Arrival Card — no photo, just the typed fields that match the passport and the eVisa you already hold.

Getting the sequence right also saves you from a common waste of effort: prepping or re-shooting a headshot for the arrival card. There is nothing to shoot. The only photo in the whole process is the one you already uploaded to the eVisa. If you have your approved eVisa PDF, your passport, and your final-leg flight details, you have everything the arrival card will ever ask for.

Here is the whole shape in one line. The eVisa is the big step you do first — Tourist $80 USD or Business $90 USD, both approved in 3–5 days, delivered as a printable PDF by email, both carrying the one photo you upload. The e-Arrival Card is the light step you do last, with no photo at all. For the complete picture, our pillar guide to the Cambodia visa for US citizens pulls requirements, cost, and timing together, and if you have not started yet, our step-by-step guide to applying for a Cambodia eVisa online walks the application end to end, photo included.

When you file a verified e-Arrival Card through us for $5 USD, it is checked end-to-end before it reaches Cambodian Immigration — the name spelling against your passport, the flight number against your final leg, and the date format that flags so many Americans. There is no photo for us to check because the card never asks for one; what we catch is the typed slip that would otherwise bounce you back to the queue at the kiosk.

Next steps and related reading for US travelers: get the eVisa photo right with our photo requirements guide for US citizens, confirm you need the e-Arrival Card if you have not already, line up the exact information you need for the e-Arrival Card before you sit down, and apply for your Cambodia eVisa when your photo and passport are ready.