UNVERIFIED EXAMPLE DATA — do not use for a real application

Civil Services Examination, 2026

UPSC CSE's online application form validates your uploaded photo and signature against a strict pixel-dimension and file-size window before it will let you proceed — most portals reject a file outside the stated KB range outright rather than resizing it for you, and some also reject the wrong pixel dimensions even when the file size is fine. The table below lists the exact numbers this exam's form expects. Use the pre-filled resizers further down this page to produce a photo and signature that match them, and always cross-check the figures against the current official notification before you submit, since exact specs can change between recruitment cycles.

PARTIALLY VERIFIED against the actual official UPSC CSE 2026 Preliminary Examination notification (Examination Notice No 05/2026-CSE, dated 04.02.2026, published on upsc.gov.in). This notification directly and explicitly confirms two qualitative requirements that were only secondary-sourced before: (1) LIVE PHOTO CAPTURE IS MANDATORY -- 'Applicants are required to upload their photograph and also capture their live photograph while filling up the Common Application Form (CAF)' (Note 2 of the notice). (2) THE TRIPLE-SIGNATURE REQUIREMENT IS CONFIRMED VERBATIM: 'Applicants are required to sign three times (one below the other) on a plain white paper using a black ink and upload the same' (Note 3 of the notice). HOWEVER, the notification does NOT itself state exact pixel dimensions or KB ranges -- for both, it refers candidates to a separate page, 'Instructions and FAQs > Instruction for filling the form > Photos and Signature', on the JavaScript-rendered application portal https://upsconline.nic.in, which could not be fetched/read as plain text in this research pass (it returned no extractable content). The numeric values above (350x350px photo, 20-300KB; signature 350x350px, 20-100KB) are therefore SECONDARY-SOURCED ONLY, not confirmed against UPSC's own instructions page this pass. Secondary sources are reasonably consistent on the photo figure (350x350px, 20-300KB) but DISAGREE on the signature image's aspect ratio/dimensions -- some report a roughly square 350x350px or 350x500px (tall, to fit three stacked signatures), others a wide rectangle like 350x150px; since three signatures are stacked vertically, a taller-than-wide image is more physically plausible than a short wide one, but this is inference, not confirmation. Given this genuine numeric conflict and the inability to reach UPSC's own specification page, source_verified_date is set to PENDING-VERIFICATION. A human should manually load https://upsconline.nic.in in a real browser (it requires JS execution) and locate the current Photos-and-Signature instructions page before publishing these numbers as authoritative. UPSC accepts JPG/JPEG only (no PNG/PDF) per multiple corroborating sources. Note also that the UPSC CSE 2026 cycle's Prelims exam already occurred (24.05.2026); the 2027 cycle notification was not yet published as of this research date, so this file is based on the most recent available official notification.