UPSC Civil Services Examination document requirements

Name your files before you open the form

UPSC is stricter about file names than most exam portals. The upload instructions on upsconline.nic.in, which the Civil Services Examination 2026 notice (No. 05/2026-CSE) points to, give each document a fixed name. For the Class 10 certificate they state that the name must match exactly. Renaming everything first saves you from hunting through your downloads folder in the middle of the application.

• photo: passport-size photograph, JPG or JPEG, 20 to 200 KB
• signature: the triple signature, JPG or JPEG, 20 to 100 KB
• id_card: your photo ID, JPG or JPEG, 20 to 200 KB
• board_certificate: Class 10 board certificate, PDF, 50 to 300 KB
• caste_certificate: caste or EWS certificate, PDF, 50 to 300 KB
• disability_certificate, pw_recommendation and name_change: PDFs of 50 to 300 KB, needed only if they apply to you

A practical habit: keep one folder for final versions only. Drafts with names like photo-new or signature-final-2 are how the wrong file ends up on the form.

A photograph that passes the face match

UPSC wants a recent colour photo on a plain white background. Your face should fill at least 75% of the frame, both ears must be visible and your eyes open. Dark or coloured glasses, shadows and a signature on the photo are not allowed. A live photo is also captured and matched with the one you upload, so an old studio print from college is a poor choice.

The 75% rule is where most people go wrong. Ordinary passport prints show a lot of shoulder and background. Take a fresh picture against a white wall, with daylight in front of you rather than behind, and ask someone to hold the phone at your eye level. Then use Crop Image to frame it from just above your hair to just below your chin, checking that both ears are still in the picture. Only after cropping, bring it into the 20 to 200 KB range with Image Fit to KB. Cropping second would throw away detail you have already paid for in KB.

The triple signature, step by step

This is the requirement new applicants find most unusual. You sign three times, one below the other, in black ink on plain white unruled paper, and the scan of all three becomes a single image. That image must be 20 to 100 KB, and its width and its height must each be between 350 and 500 pixels.

1. Sign three times in a neat column, with a small, even gap between each signature. Keep each one compact, since a long, sprawling signature makes the column hard to fit into a near-square shape.
2. Photograph or scan the page in good light, with the camera held flat above it.
3. Crop tightly around the three signatures so the image is not much wider than it is tall.
4. In Image Fit to KB, set a width and height inside the 350 to 500 pixel range and a target of 20 to 100 KB, then save as JPG.
5. Name the file signature.

Your ID and the PDF certificates

For id_card, Aadhaar is recommended. Voter ID, PAN, passport, driving licence or another government photo ID are also accepted. Pick the card you will actually carry, because you must bring the same ID to the exam. Photograph it on a dark tabletop so the edges stand out, crop to the card, and fit it to 20 to 200 KB.

Every certificate is a PDF of 50 to 300 KB. If you only have a paper copy, Scan to PDF turns phone photos of the pages into one tidy file. A colour scan that comes out above 300 KB can be reduced with Compress PDF. A certificate downloaded as a digital PDF is sometimes too light, under 50 KB; Meet Minimum Size lifts it over the minimum without touching the content.

For the caste or EWS certificate, password-protected PDFs are refused, and the instructions note it can also be fetched from DigiLocker. If your state portal gave you a locked file and you know the password, Unlock PDF saves an unlocked copy. The pw_recommendation file is only for candidates claiming a scribe or extra time for a writing limitation, and name_change only for those whose name has changed.

Check, then upload

Before you submit, run each file through Portal Preflight for UPSC CSE. It checks the format and KB range against the figures on this page, but look at the signature's pixel size yourself too. Like every DocNimble tool, it works in your browser, so your ID card and certificates stay on your own device and are not uploaded to DocNimble.

Which rules this page follows

These are the rules for CSE 2026, taken from the UPSC online portal instructions referred to by notice No. 05/2026-CSE. Rules can change between cycles, so confirm against the CSE 2026 notice and the current instructions on upsconline.nic.in. Where they differ from this page, the official text wins.