Passport Machine Readable Zone — MRZ Requirements
The Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) consists of the two lines of 44 standardized OCR-B characters, chevron symbols (<<<), and check digits printed at the bottom of your passport bio-page, which the Azerbaijan ASAN Visa system uses as the authoritative source for your legal name, passport number, nationality, and expiration date.
Legal Context & 2026 Border Rules
When you upload your passport bio-page to apply for an Azerbaijan eVisa, the ASAN Visa optical character recognition (OCR) engine reads the two bottom MRZ lines formatted under ICAO Document 9303 standards.
At airline check-in and at Baku Heydar Aliyev Airport (GYD) border control, officers swipe your passport’s MRZ line. If the passport number, date of birth, or name spelling on your printed eVisa diverges from the MRZ data—even by a single digit or transposed letter—the automated border gate flags the visa as invalid.
In addition, your passport MRZ must show an expiration date that is at least 3 months (90 days) after the expiration date of your 90-day eVisa validity window (meaning roughly 6 months of total remaining validity from your application date).
What You Should Do Before & During Your Trip
- When photographing your passport bio-page, make sure all four corners of the page and both bottom `<<<` MRZ lines are 100% visible with no flash glare or fingers covering the text.
- If your name contains umlauts, accents, or hyphens (common in German, Spanish, and French passports), check the bottom MRZ line to see how your name is officially transliterated.
- Never confuse the letter `O` with the number `0` or the letter `I` with the number `1` in your passport number.
Common Traveler Mistakes
- Cropping the bottom 1 cm of the passport photo so the `<<<` chevrons are cut off.
- Applying with a passport that expires in 4 months (since the eVisa validity window is 90 days plus the required 90 days post-visa buffer, ~6 months total validity is needed).
Frequently Asked Questions About Passport Machine Readable Zone — MRZ Requirements
What happens if I made a typo in my passport number on my Azerbaijan eVisa?
An eVisa with an incorrect passport number or date of birth is legally invalid for boarding or entry, and government systems cannot edit an already-issued visa PDF. A corrected application must be submitted prior to travel.
How should German or Spanish travelers enter names with umlauts (ä, ö, ü) or accents?
Always match the English/ASCII transliteration shown in the bottom two MRZ lines of your passport (for example, `MUELLER` for `Müller`).
Related Official Glossary Terms
ASAN Visa (ASAN Viza) is the official electronic visa issuance platform of the Republic of Azerbaijan, operated by the State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovations to issue single-entry 30-day eVisas to citizens of 90+ eligible countries.
The Azerbaijan Urgent 3-Hour eVisa (Təcili Viza) is an official priority processing tier within the ASAN Visa system that reviews and issues single-entry 30-day electronic visas within 3 to 5 hours, operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including weekends and Azerbaijani public holidays.
Heydar Aliyev International Airport (IATA: GYD, ICAO: UBBB) is Azerbaijan’s primary international aviation gateway located 20 kilometers northeast of central Baku, handling over 90% of foreign eVisa arrivals at Terminal 1 and domestic flights to Nakhchivan at Terminal 2.
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