Germany: the photo is part of the application
A standard German written application (Bewerbung) is fairly formal. According to EURES, the European Commission's job-mobility network, a friendly application photograph with a neutral background is part of a German job application — attached either to the cover sheet or to the top right-hand corner of the CV. The same EURES page lists the standard components of a German written application as a cover letter, a CV (with a photo), and copies of qualifications and certificates.
That's the custom, not the law. Germany has an anti-discrimination law, the AGG, so in principle you could apply photo-free. But a German university career service, HS Bremen, is blunt about the practical reality: applying without a photo is met with a lack of understanding by practically all German companies, and it recommends including the photo. So while nothing forces you to add one, leaving it off in Germany reads as unusual rather than progressive.
The UK: leave it off
The UK convention is the opposite. The University of Kent careers service notes that UK CVs do not tend to include a photograph. There's a reason beyond taste: the UK National Careers Service, the government's own careers advice, says not to put age, date of birth, marital status or nationality on a CV — and a photo hands an employer several of those signals at a glance. If you're applying in Britain, a text-only CV is the norm and the safer choice.
Worth noting the sharper contrast further afield: HS Bremen points out that in the USA a CV photo is taboo — the exact opposite of the German norm.
Poland: common, though not required
Poland's convention is looser than Germany's, but it doesn't follow the UK either. EURES's guidance on the Polish CV lists the content a CV is expected to contain — personal data, work experience, education and skills — and a photograph is not among the required items. In practice, though, a photo is still common on Polish CVs and often expected, especially by local employers. With international companies it's optional. And if you're applying through an ATS portal, skip it, for the parsing reasons below.
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CVder reads the job posting and your resume side by side, then shows the exact terms to add and the formatting a parser would trip on.
The ATS caveat
There's one more reason to think twice before embedding a photo, and it has nothing to do with etiquette. Many employers run applications through an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that parses your CV into machine-readable text before a human sees it. A photo embedded as an image can interfere with that parsing, because the software is reading text, not looking at pictures.
If you're applying in Germany, where the photo is expected, the fix is usually to keep the layout simple and treat the photo as a clean, separate element rather than the backbone of the design. If you're unsure how your file will parse, paste the job description and your resume into our free ATS checker to see the match. For the fuller picture of what these systems can and can't read, see our guide on how to pass an ATS.
- Germany: include a friendly photo with a neutral background, at the top right of the CV or on the cover sheet — it's customary and expected, though not legally required.
- UK: leave the photo off, and also drop age, date of birth, marital status and nationality.
- Poland: not required, but still common and often expected, especially by local employers; optional with international companies; skip it when applying through an ATS portal.
- USA: no photo — it's considered taboo there.
- Anywhere with an ATS: if you do add a photo, keep the layout clean so it doesn't break text parsing.