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The State Department is once again accepting online passport renewals, but you'll have to try your luck at a daily lottery system to submit an application.
The agency will accept applications starting at 1 p.m. ET each day and "close once we reach our limit for the day." It doesn't say how many it will process daily, but the State Department pledged to increase the number "each day so we can monitor the system’s performance in real time."
Currently, you need to print out an application, staple a photo to it, write a check, and mail your passport in to be renewed. That's still an option if you can't get a slot via the online portal. Either way, expect up to wait between 6-8 weeks before receiving your new passport.
In order to apply online, you’ll need to enter information about your current passport and upload a digital photograph. You will also be required to pay any fees associated with your renewal before submitting your application.
There are some eligibility requirements. You need to be renewing a regular, 10-year passport and be at least 25 years old. That passport needs to have been issued between 2009 and 2015 or more than nine but less than 15 years ago. You can't submit a renewal that requires a change of name, gender, date of birth, or place of birth.
Plus, you can't have international travel plans for at least eight weeks; there's no expedited service and your existing passport will be canceled once you submit your renewal application. You need to live in the US; no Army Post Office (APO) or Fleet Post Office (FPO) addresses.
The last test of this system was announced in December 2021 via an executive order from President Biden and ran through March 2023. At the time, the State Department said it had accepted more than 500,000 applications between August 2022 and March 2023.
The effort to roll out an online passport system has been going on for years, however. It's part of a larger State Department modernization effort known as the ConsularOne program and dates back to 2009. But as a 2021 report from the agency's Office of Inspector General (OIG) revealed, the online passport renewal portion suffered from serious mismanagement problems.
"Virtually no progress [was] achieved on these initiatives during the past decade," the OIG said.
Had the agency gotten its act together, it would have helped staff process the backlog of passport applications that built up during the pandemic.
"Had the Online Passport Renewal system been available, [staff] could have pivoted to remote work and kept a greater portion of the incoming passport applications moving throughout the COVID-19 pandemic-related maximum telework orders in 2020," the OIG report said. "However, since the system was unavailable, ...staff were required to return to the office sooner than other department employees to address the backlog of passport applications that accumulated during the pandemic’s first few months."