The United States passport will only be available with 38 pages in 2028 instead of the two passport book sizes that are currently issued by the State Department of the United States: one is 26 pages; and the other is 50 pages.
United States Passport Will Only Be Available With 38 Pages in 2028
The shift of the passport book to only contain 38 pages will coincide with the release of the next redesign of the United States passport.
“Currently, the Next Generation Passport (NGP) is available in 26-page and 50-page book sizes. Previously, the legacy ePassport was available in a 28-page and 52-page book”, according to this notice from the Federal Register, which is the official daily journal of the National Archives of the federal government of the United States. “The U.S passport Series B is being redesigned for an anticipated rollout in 2028, and this will include a shift to a single-sized book with 38 pages. All passport book types will change with the exception of the Emergency Passport, which will remain a 12-page book.”
The Next Generation Passport was introduced in 2021 because it was considered to be smarter, safer, and better than its predecessor with the incorporation of new types of technology at that time.
Citizens who need more than 38 pages will be required to order a new passport book, as the service of adding additional visa pages to United States passports was discontinued effective as of Friday, January 1, 2016. Click here for information on how to renew your passport.
The results of a feasibility study that was conducted in 2024 pertaining to the impacts of moving to the production of a passport book of a single size instead of two different sizes determined that a 38-page passport book would both increase efficiencies and reduce waste within the production of the passport at the Government Publishing Office and within the issuance process at the Department of State of the United States.
“On average, 92 percent of customers applying for a passport book request the 26-page book. Of the 8 percent of customers receiving the 50-page book, most do so due to a policy practice to issue 50-page books to special-issuance and overseas applicants”, according to the aforementioned notice. “In other words, while some frequent international travelers, U.S. citizens residing abroad, and special-issuance passport holders will need to renew more frequently once the 50-page option becomes unavailable, the Department expects those applicants to make up a small percentage of all passport applicants. Switching to a single-sized, 38-page book will allow more visa pages for the majority of applicants. Planned enhancements to the Department’s Online Passport Renewal (OPR) platform that will allow overseas applicants to renew their passports online are also expected to introduce new efficiencies for those customers and may mitigate this burden.”
Final Boarding Call
I am apparently one of the eight percent of customers who currently has a passport book with 50 pages.
As much as I do not like to admit it, the elimination of the passport book that contains 50 pages is probably a good idea, as an increasing number of countries are eliminating passport stamps in favor of electronic means of granting official access to visitors of their countries — such as 29 countries in Europe as one example as part of an initiative by the European Union called the Entry/Exit System that is designed to speed up the immigration process at customs while simultaneously reducing paperwork — and fewer passport stamps mean fewer pages are likely required for stamps in the future.
All photographs ©2016 and ©2019 by Brian Cohen.
