A lost or stolen passport abroad is a fixable day, not a ruined trip, and the fix has a fixed order: file a police report where local practice expects one, contact your embassy or consulate and ask for an emergency passport appointment, and bring identification, a passport photo, and the report to it. US missions can issue a limited-validity emergency passport for direct return home, often the same or next day; a full replacement follows the standard process. Everything else — insurance claims, airline rebooking, hotel patience — hangs off those two steps.
This is a sourced roundup based on US State Department guidance for lost and stolen passports abroad as of mid-2026; procedures differ by country and by nationality, so your own government's travel pages are the controlling source. Information, not consular or legal advice.
What comes first, the police or the embassy?
Check your destination's practice. Many countries expect a police report for a theft — and your travel insurer will likely demand one for the claim regardless — while a passport lost on a beach may need nothing but the embassy. In either case, the embassy is where the solution lives: US citizens report the loss (form DS-64) and apply for the replacement (form DS-11) at the same appointment. Missions run appointment systems and emergency lines; the embassy's after-hours number exists precisely for this, and calling it early in the local day beats arriving at a closed counter with a flight at midnight.
What is an emergency limited-validity passport?
The consular workhorse: a stripped-down passport issued for direct travel home, valid for a limited period — commonly around a year or less, sized to your return. It is produced far faster than a full book, frequently same-day or next-day in major capitals, and airlines accept it as a normal document for the return trip. If you want the full ten-year replacement instead — say you are mid-round-the-world trip — that follows the standard application path and can take longer, since full books print in centralized facilities. Say the word "emergency" at every step; the system routes on it.
What do you need for the appointment?
Identification and evidence. A driver's license, a photocopy or photo of the lost passport — this is the quiet argument for photographing your passport page before every trip — a citizenship document if you have one, a passport photo meeting US specifications, which local photographers near embassies produce on demand, the police report if applicable, and the fee, payable in the formats the mission accepts. Missing pieces stretch the timeline but rarely stop it: consular staff verify identity through other channels, and the system is built for people whose wallet left with the passport.
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What about the rest of the trip?
Airlines need rebooking on the new document — call the carrier with the emergency passport details before the airport, and allow extra check-in time while staff re-enter document data. The travel insurance claim runs on the police report and receipts; file within the policy's window. And the old passport, if it later surfaces, is dead: report and return it, because a recovered reported-stolen passport is not reusable. Digital copies of documents, stored before departure in cloud storage reachable from any device, shrink every one of these steps.
- Police report where local practice or insurance expects one.
- Embassy appointment: say "emergency passport" and mean it.
- Bring ID, photo, police report, fee — and a passport photocopy if you kept one.
- Emergency limited book goes home; full replacement is the slower standard path.
- Rebook flights on the new document before airport day.
The emergency passport exists because governments assume this happens to hundreds of their citizens every day. You are not the exception; you are the Tuesday queue.
Nationality changes the addresses but not the sequence: British travelers apply online for an Emergency Travel Document and collect at their consulate, Canadians work through their embassy's emergency line for a similar limited document, and EU citizens in another member state can often obtain an emergency travel document faster still, since the consular cooperation rules inside the union are unusually streamlined. The search string that works for everyone is the same shape — the name of your government, the word "emergency travel document," and the city you are standing in — and the answer will name the documents, fees, and hours that matter on your exact patch of the map.
Who is the cautionary tale?
The cruise passenger whose passport lived in the ship's safe until a port day went wrong, and the traveler who stored everything in a single stolen bag. Split documents across bags, keep photocopies or phone photos separate from the originals, and the worst case drops from crisis to errand. The emergency passport will get you home either way — the copies decide whether the trip survives the middle chapters.