Japan Takken Exam Photo 2026: Size, Deadline, Phone Route

In Japan, the public notice for the 2026 takken (real estate transaction agent) exam was issued on June 5. Applications open on July 1. Last year there were 306,099 applicants — and all 300,000-plus of them prepare their application photo within roughly the same one-month window.

A photo is not something you can just “swap out later.” If you can’t make the correction by the cooperating agency’s specified deadline, the whole application is rejected and you can’t sit the exam that year. The ¥8,200 fee is refunded if you’re not accepted, but your next chance is a year away. In this article, based on RETIO’s (the Real Estate Transaction Improvement Organization) official 2026 guidance, we lay out the photo specs for both the online and postal applications, plus how to get it all done on your phone.

The 2026 application schedule

Note that My Page is run on a single-year basis. The account of anyone who sat the exam last year was closed on March 31, 2026, so you’ll need to create a new My Page to apply this year.

The online application photo spec — note that it’s not “within six months”

The face-photo conditions required for the 2026 online application are as follows.

The system automatically adjusts the position and size of the face in the uploaded photo and unifies everything to JPG. In other words, you don’t need to do pixel-level fine-tuning yourself. The catch is that a photo the system judges it “cannot fully adjust” will error out. The official list of bad examples includes the following.

• Shadows, furniture, a car interior and the like appearing in the background
• The face ratio being extremely small, or extremely large
• Hair falling over the eyes, or glare on the lenses of glasses
• Anything that may have been edited with an app
• A finished photo re-shot with a camera, an overexposed shot, or a grainy image

If it errors out, the official guidance is to “retake the photo and upload a different one.” In other words, it comes down to the quality of the shot — the background, shadows and face ratio.

The postal application photo spec — strict on paper and size

The “3.2–3.6cm from the top of the head to the chin” face dimension works out to the face occupying 71–80% of the photo’s 4.5cm height. Cropping it to match by hand is fairly demanding, so adjusting it with a tool that supports numeric specs is the realistic approach. The full details of the spec are gathered on the takken exam photo spec page.

Doing it all on your phone in 3 steps

Even without going to a photo studio, you can prepare a photo that meets the official criteria on your phone. A single piece of data covers both the online and the postal application.

1. 1

   Shoot on your phone in front of a plain wall

   During daylight, shoot from the front against a whitish, plain wall, in a spot where no shadow falls. Take off any hat and keep your hair off your eyes. Feel free to reshoot until you’re happy with it.
2. 2

   Remove the background and adjust the face position with AI (check it for free)

   Upload your photo to Ramune and the AI removes the background and adjusts the face position to 0.1mm precision to match the spec of 3.2–3.6cm from the top of the head to the chin. Checking the result is free.
3. 3

   If you like it, ¥200 — upload for the online application, print at a convenience store for the postal one

   Once you purchase, you get image data adjusted to the standard size. For the online application, just upload it as-is. For the postal application, use the automatically issued QR code to print on a convenience store’s dedicated photo paper from ¥30 for L-size, then cut it to 4.5×3.5cm and paste it on.

A final checklist before you submit

• Was it taken on or after January 1, 2026 (you’re not reusing last year’s photo)?
• Are there any shadows, objects or gradients in the background?
• No hat, facing forward, you alone? Is your hair off your eyes, and free of glare on your glasses?
• Online application: is it a JPG / PNG of at least 900px × 720px?
• Postal application: borderless 4.5×3.5cm, face 3.2–3.6cm, dedicated photo paper (sticker-style not allowed)?
• After applying: did you check your review status in My Page three business days after paying the fee?

The convenience-store printing steps (a QR code works as-is at Lawson and FamilyMart; Seven-Eleven goes via netprint) are explained in our convenience-store printing guide.

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