Pakistani Passport Renewal in the USA: Step-by-Step

Your Pakistani passport is close to expiring, you are living in the United States, and the advice online contradicts itself. One page says do it all online from your laptop. Another says you have to show up in Washington. Both are partly right, and which one applies to you depends on a few simple things about your case. Here is the full picture, with the current fees.

Who can renew a Pakistani passport from the USA

Renewal is for people who already hold a Machine Readable Passport, the burgundy booklet Pakistan has issued since 2004. The Directorate General of Immigration and Passports, usually shortened to DGIP, is the authority that issues it. Pakistan’s missions in the United States handle the front desk work on DGIP’s behalf.

You are looking at a straightforward renewal if your passport has expired or is running low on validity, your personal details are not changing, and the booklet itself is in one piece. DGIP’s e-Services portal lists renewal as available once a passport has expired or has less than one year of validity left, although individual missions sometimes publish a shorter window, so check before you assume you are too early.

It is not a renewal, and the online route is closed to you, in any of these situations:

• You have never held a Machine Readable Passport, so this is a first application
• Your passport was lost, stolen, or damaged
• Your name, your father’s or husband’s name, date of birth, marital status, profession, religion, or dual nationality entry needs to change
• The applicant is a child, where the rules on parental presence apply instead

Those cases are still perfectly normal, they just go through a Pakistani mission in person rather than through the portal.

Passport Pakistan renewal online: how the DGIP portal works

The online route runs through DGIP’s e-Services portal at onlinemrp.dgip.gov.pk. It was built specifically so overseas Pakistanis would not have to fly across a country for a booklet, and it covers more than renewals: newborn passports for children up to two years old, reprints of damaged or exhausted passports, reprints for a first or second loss, and partial modifications of marital status or profession.

The shape of it is the same for everyone. You register an account, fill in your demographic details, upload the scans, submit fingerprint forms, pay by credit or debit card, and then wait while the application is verified at headquarters in Islamabad. Status updates arrive by email at the address you registered with. When the passport is ready, it is either delivered to your home address or sent to the Pakistani mission nearest you for collection, and you choose which at the time of applying.

Two small details cause most of the rejections. The photograph has to be a JPEG of 350 by 467 pixels and under 3 MB, which is a specific size rather than whatever your phone produced. And the scan of your CNIC, NICOP, or Smart Card has to be current, not the expired card sitting in your drawer. If the portal gets stuck, DGIP’s online passport section is reachable at mrponline@dgip.gov.pk, and delivery problems go to onlinedelivery@dgip.gov.pk.

Renewing in person at the embassy or a consulate

Pakistan runs five missions in the United States that handle passports: the Embassy in Washington DC, and the Consulates General in New York, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles. Our guide to the Pakistan Consulate in Los Angeles lists its address, counter hours and the ten states it covers. The same five handle document attestation, including a Pakistani Power of Attorney. Attestation can be done by post too; see Power of Attorney by post. You go to the one covering your state.

Adults attend in person. The Washington embassy asks for your valid NICOP or CNIC, your current or expired Pakistani passport, proof of your legal status in the United States such as a US passport, green card, or visa, proof of where you live such as a driver’s license, state ID, or lease, and a self-addressed prepaid certified return envelope if you want the passport mailed back. Bring photocopies of all of it, because the counter will ask.

Children under 18 need more. Both parents should attend with their own valid CNIC or NICOP, and where one parent genuinely cannot be there, a consent form takes their place. A child aged 10 or over needs a NICOP, a Juvenile Card, or a fingerprinted Child Registration Certificate. Under 10, a NICOP or a standard Child Registration Certificate is enough. Where a court has settled custody, bring the guardian certificate.

A lost passport adds a police report to the list. Government employees add a no objection certificate from their department.

What it costs and how long it takes

These are the fees published for Pakistan’s missions in the United States as of August 2026, in US dollars. Payment at the Washington embassy is by debit or credit card only, and no other form of payment is accepted, so do not turn up with a money order.

On timing, the Washington embassy reports roughly 3 to 4 weeks for regular processing and 2 to 3 weeks for urgent. Treat those as the typical range rather than a promise, because the booklet is printed in Pakistan and shipped back, and every step in that chain can slip. Losing a passport is the expensive lesson in that table: replacing a lost 10-year passport urgently costs $450 against the $98 a routine renewal would have cost.

The Emergency Travel Document is worth knowing about separately. It is a one-way document for travelling to Pakistan when something urgent happens and there is no time for a passport. It requires CNIC or NICOP verification and proof of the emergency, and it does not bring you back.

Documents to gather before you start

Whichever route you take, assemble these first. Almost every delayed application is a missing document, not a decision that went against someone.

1. Your current or most recently expired Pakistani passport, with the data pages scanned
2. A valid NICOP, CNIC, or Smart National Identity Card, not expired
3. Proof of your legal status in the United States
4. Proof of your US address
5. A photograph matching the exact specification if you are applying online
6. A prepaid return envelope if you want the passport mailed to you
7. For a married woman, a NICOP or CNIC showing the husband’s name

Number two is where most people stop. A Pakistani passport cannot be renewed against an expired identity card, and a great many overseas Pakistanis discover their NICOP lapsed years ago at exactly the moment they need it. If that is you, the card comes first and the passport second, and our NICOP renewal guide walks through that application on its own.

MRP or e-passport: which pak passport you get from the USA

Pakistan launched its e-passport in 2023, a booklet with an electronic chip holding your biometric data, contactless reading, and around 29 new security features. It works with the automated e-gates at airports that read chips instead of queueing you for an officer.

Here is the part that matters if you are reading this from Houston or New Jersey. The e-passport rolled out through DGIP’s field offices inside Pakistan. DGIP’s own guidance says the facility will be extended to foreign missions in due course of time, which is a plain way of saying it has not happened yet. So a renewal filed from the United States, as of August 2026, gives you a Machine Readable Passport.

That is not a problem. The MRP is a fully valid travel document accepted worldwide, and it is what Pakistan has issued for two decades. It just means the chip and the e-gates wait until the rollout reaches the missions. If you specifically want the e-passport and you happen to be travelling to Pakistan anyway, you can apply at a field office there instead.

The verdict

Ask yourself three questions and your route is decided. Do you already hold a Machine Readable Passport? Is every detail on it staying exactly the same? Is the booklet in your hand, undamaged? Three yes answers and you can do this from your kitchen table through the DGIP portal. A single no and you are booking a visit to your nearest Pakistani mission, which is not the disaster it sounds like, just a morning and a folder of photocopies. Either way, look at your identity card before anything else, because the whole application rests on it, and if it has lapsed then NICOP renewal is genuinely your first step and not your second.