Lost or stolen passport abroad

Report the loss to the State Department as soon as you are reasonably sure the passport is gone. USAGov sets out three routes: submit Form DS-64 through the online tool, call toll-free on 1-877-487-2778 with a TTY line on 1-888-874-7793, or complete the paper DS-64 and mail it to the address printed on the form. From overseas the online route is the only one that is genuinely practical, and it is the one the Department itself pushes.

Reporting is not a formality and it is not reversible. Under 22 CFR 51.4, a passport is invalid once it has been reported lost or stolen to the Department, a US passport agency or a diplomatic or consular post abroad and the Department has recorded that report. USAGov states the consequence in plainer language: once reported, the State Department invalidates it and you cannot use it if you find it. There is no mechanism for un-reporting.

That cuts both ways, and the timing decision is real. A passport in someone else's hands is a first-class identity document that can be used to open accounts, cross borders and rent things in your name, which is precisely why cancellation is instant and permanent. But if the book is merely misplaced rather than stolen — left at a hotel front desk, in a tour operator's document folder, in the safe of the room you checked out of that morning — an hour spent making phone calls before you file the report can save you an entire consular appointment.

Where the passport was clearly taken, do not spend that hour. Report it, and report it before you go anywhere near a border. The US Embassy in Bangkok is blunt about the consequence of travelling on a book you have already reported: you must replace the passport even if you find it, and if you arrive in Thailand on a lost or stolen passport you will not be admitted to the country. Other governments run the same check against the same Interpol-fed lists.

Reporting also does not start the replacement. USAGov is explicit that reporting a passport lost or stolen does not replace it — those are two separate transactions, and the second one has to happen in person. Keep the confirmation email or the reference number the reporting tool gives you: it is useful evidence at the consular window, and it is useful again later if anyone questions why a document in your name was in circulation after the date you lost control of it.

One practical note if the passport was stolen along with everything else: you do not need the passport number to report it. The form asks for it, and supplying it speeds things up, but the Department can locate the record from your identifying details. Photographs of the data page stored in email or cloud storage are worth their weight here, and this is the moment you will find out whether you took one.

The United States runs embassies and a network of consulates general and consular agencies, and they divide countries into districts. You do not go to the capital by default; you go to the post whose district you are in. The US Mission in Mexico runs an embassy plus nine consulates and publishes a location finder for exactly this reason. The US Mission in the United Kingdom splits the country four ways: the Embassy in London covers England and Wales, the Consulate General in Belfast covers Northern Ireland, Edinburgh covers Scotland, and Hamilton covers Bermuda.

Almost every post has moved to appointment-only service. The US Mission in Mexico states flatly that there is no walk-in service for citizens needing passport, citizenship or birth registration services and that these are by appointment only. Thailand's ACS unit takes appointments Monday to Thursday and does not accept walk-ins for non-emergency services. The UK mission requires an in-person appointment to replace a lost or stolen passport and says you cannot do it by mail. Turning up at the gate without a booking is, in most countries, a wasted morning.

The calendar problem is worse than it looks because consular sections observe two sets of public holidays. Every mission page above carries the same sentence in some form: passport services are not available at weekends or on local or US holidays. That means a US federal holiday closes the window even in a country that has never heard of it, and a local religious or national holiday closes it too. Count the actual working days between now and your flight before you assume you have time.

If your travel is genuinely imminent, ask for an emergency appointment rather than taking the next routine slot. The US Mission in the United Kingdom publishes the test it applies: you must not have been able to secure an online appointment before your travel date, you must be within five working days of booked urgent travel, and you must have a confirmed itinerary. Thailand asks people travelling within two weeks to contact ACS Bangkok or Chiang Mai through the relevant contact form with a copy of the confirmed itinerary attached.

The itinerary is the currency here. Emergency capacity at a consular post is finite and is rationed by evidence of travel, not by how upset you sound on the phone. A booked, paid, dated reservation in your name is what converts a routine case into an emergency one. If your original ticket was in the lost wallet along with everything else, an airline can re-issue the confirmation to your email address in minutes and that is enough.

Outside office hours, and for anything that is a genuine crisis rather than an inconvenience, the State Department runs a duty officer system reachable through Overseas Citizens Services. USAGov gives 1-888-407-4747 as the line for concerns about a US citizen outside the country; US mission sites also publish +1-202-501-4444 as the number to use from overseas. A duty officer will not print you a passport at two in the morning, but they will tell you what the post can do at opening and, in a life-or-death case, get someone to open it.

The core package is Form DS-11 plus Form DS-64. The US Mission in the United Kingdom sets it out step by step: complete DS-11 online, print both pages single-sided, check that the 2D barcode appears in the upper left of page one, and do not sign it. Thailand's checklist is the same shape — a printed, unsigned DS-11, the printed DS-64, and the supporting documents. The signature is witnessed by a consular officer at the counter, which is the whole reason the appointment has to be in person.

Question 21 on the DS-11 is where you explain the loss, and it is worth taking seriously. The UK mission asks applicants to explain in detail how the passport or passport card was lost or stolen, to give the previous book or card number, and to state the date and location of the loss if known, continuing on a separate sheet if there is not enough room. A vague three-word answer invites follow-up questions; a clear narrative with dates, places and what you did about it usually does not.

Your Social Security number is a mandatory field, and the workaround if you do not have one is specific. Both the UK and Thailand missions require applicants without an SSN to submit a signed and dated statement containing the exact sentence: "I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the following is true and correct: I have never been issued a Social Security number by the Social Security Administration." Bangkok adds a consequence worth knowing — if an applicant cannot provide their SSN, the post can issue a passport valid for direct return to the United States only.

Then the evidence. Bring whatever proof of US citizenship you can produce: a US birth certificate, a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, an expired US passport or a passport card all count on the UK mission's list. Bring a government-issued photo ID — a foreign passport, a driver's license — and the UK page marks this as "if available", which is the post acknowledging that people in this situation frequently have nothing. A photocopy of the lost passport, if you have one on your phone, is on Thailand's required list.

Photographs and money are the two things people forget. Photo requirements differ by post: the UK asks for one compliant photo, Thailand asks for two. Fees are paid in advance through the US government's secure payment site at Pay.gov in both cases, with the printed confirmation email brought to the appointment; the UK mission additionally warns that contactless and Apple Pay are not accepted at the counter and that cash is taken at London and Belfast but not Edinburgh. The UK page currently lists an adult book at $165, a card at $30 and the pair at $195.

Finally, plan for how the document gets back to you. The UK mission requires a pre-paid, self-addressed Royal Mail Special Delivery envelope with the application and states that you cannot collect the passport from the Embassy in London. Thailand publishes separate passport return arrangements for Bangkok and Chiang Mai. If you are moving on to another city or country before the book is ready, raise that at the appointment rather than after — return logistics are usually the thing that cannot be fixed retrospectively.

What a post can print on site is not a normal passport. It is a limited-validity book, and the limitation is written into the document. The US Mission in Mexico quotes the endorsements applicants will see on the signature page: either "This passport expires on (MON, DY, YEAR) and cannot be extended" or "This passport is a replacement for a Lost/Stolen/Damaged Passport and expires on (MON, DY, YEAR). It cannot be extended." The legal basis is 22 CFR 51.4, which allows the Department to limit the validity period of any passport to less than the normal period.

The limitation can extend to the pages as well as the dates. The US Mission in Thailand describes a temporary emergency passport with five blank pages and validity limited to cover only your travel plan. That is enough to get you out of the country and home, and not much more. If your onward plans involve several visa-requiring countries, five pages and a short expiry are a constraint you need to see before you book anything.

Turnaround at the counter is genuinely fast where the post is set up for it. The US Mission in Italy publishes that for lost or stolen passports a limited-validity passport can be issued the same day the application is made if the application is received before 12:00PM, and otherwise on the next business day. The UK mission says it is only able to issue limited-validity emergency passports for same-day issuance, and only if the application is approved. Same day, in every case, means same working day at that post.

The full ten-year book is a different transaction on a different clock. Italy's mission explains why: except in emergencies, US passports are now produced at facilities in the United States, and those passports are ready for collection roughly five weeks after submission. Thailand quotes four to six weeks and adds the detail that matters most to anyone used to domestic service — expedited processing is not available when applying overseas. There is no fee you can pay abroad that turns five weeks into five days.

Acceptance by other countries is the risk nobody warns you about until it bites. The US Mission in Thailand states plainly that an emergency passport may not be recognized by all countries and directs travelers to check entry, exit and visa requirements for each destination. A limited-validity book with months rather than years on it will also collide with the six-month validity rules many countries apply. If your route home involves a transit or a stopover with immigration control, check that leg specifically before you fly.

Treat the emergency book as a one-journey document unless you have confirmed otherwise. It gets you across the borders you have to cross now; it is not a substitute for a passport for the next decade, it cannot be extended, and the endorsement printed inside it tells every officer who opens it exactly what it is.

The emergency passport is meant to be exchanged, and the exchange is a mail-in transaction rather than another appointment. Both the UK and Mexico missions run it on Form DS-5504. The UK mission's requirements are the tightest published set: the passport must have been an emergency limited-validity book, issued less than 12 months ago, undamaged, in your current name or accompanied by legal documentation of a change, and it must not carry the endorsement "A full validity replacement must be approved by the Department of State".

That endorsement is the one to look for. Where it appears, the straightforward mail-in exchange is closed to you and the replacement has to go back through the Department rather than being handled locally. It is worth reading the signature page of the emergency book before you leave the country, because discovering the endorsement from a different continent months later is an avoidable problem.

There is also a timing bar on the exchange itself. The UK mission requires that you have no imminent travel plans within the next four weeks, for the obvious reason that the exchange involves posting your only travel document to a consular section. The Mexico mission's version of the same service asks applicants to send the passport they are replacing along with the completed DS-5504 and a new passport-style photograph, following the post's shipping instructions carefully.

The mechanics are otherwise light. Print and sign the DS-5504 — this one is signed, unlike the DS-11 — check the 2D barcode, enclose one compliant photograph taken within the last six months, include the emergency passport itself, add legal proof of any name change, and enclose a pre-paid self-addressed return envelope. The UK mission adds a warning that reads as though it has been learned the hard way: do not mail the application to the United States. It goes to the post that serves you.

The same DS-5504 route covers two adjacent problems that often surface at the same time. If the new book contains an error in your name, gender or place of birth, or a printing defect on the biographical page, posts correct it at no charge while the passport is still valid — the US Mission in Thailand publishes that explicitly. And if your name changed within a year of issue, the same form handles it with a certified marriage certificate, divorce certificate or court order.

If you are back in the United States by the time you get around to the exchange, do not use these overseas pages. The domestic route is different, and our guide to getting a US passport covers which applications can go by mail or online and which have to be made in person at an acceptance facility.

Where the passport was stolen rather than lost, some posts require a police report and treat it as a document, not a suggestion. The US Mission in Thailand puts an original police report at item two on its required-documents list and tells applicants to obtain it from the Thai police station nearest the location of the loss, giving the Tourist Police hotline as 1155. Even where a post does not demand one, a local report is worth twenty minutes: it is the document that supports an insurance claim, a card issuer's fraud investigation and any later dispute about when you lost control of the book.

Get the report in writing and get a reference number. In many countries the report will be in the local language, which is fine for the consular file but less useful to an insurer at home; ask whether an English-language copy or a certified translation is available, and photograph every page before you hand the original over to anyone. If the theft happened on transport or in a hotel, ask the operator for their own incident record as well.

A stolen passport is a live identity-theft exposure until it is cancelled, which is the argument for reporting it to the Department the same hour rather than the same day. The document contains your full name, date and place of birth, a photograph and a number that appears on a great many other records. Cancellation removes its border value immediately; it does not remove the value of the data printed inside it, and that is worth watching for months rather than days.

If the theft involved violence, threats or anything that left you shaken, tell the consular section. The State Department's citizen services include help for US citizens who are victims of crime overseas — the US Mission in the United Kingdom describes connecting crime victims with police and other services and providing information and resources to address physical, emotional and financial injury from crime. That is a separate consular function from the passport counter and you can use both in the same visit.

Treat the passport as one item on a longer list. If it went missing inside a wallet or a bag, the cards, the driver's license and possibly a Social Security card went with it, and each of those has its own clock and its own issuer. USAGov's replacement guidance for vital documents deals with them one by one, and our guide to identity theft in the USA covers the credit-file side, which is the part that does the lasting damage.

One caution specific to being abroad: the panic is exactly the conditions in which recovery scams work. Nobody legitimate will call you offering to retrieve your passport for a fee, and no consular officer will ask you to send money to a private account. All official consular fees are paid to the US government through Pay.gov or at the post's cashier, and the posts publish their fee schedules openly.

The passport was a container. Everything stamped or pasted into it — the visa that admits you, the entry stamp that proves when you arrived, the residence permit that lets you stay — went with it, and none of that is reissued by the United States. The US Mission in Thailand is the clearest published example: Thai immigration law requires entry and exit stamps and Thai visas to be transferred into the new passport, and after receiving the new book you must visit a Thai immigration office to have the visa transferred.

The mechanics are usually the same wherever you are. You take the cancelled passport and the new passport to the host country's immigration authority and they transfer or re-endorse. The Thai mission notes that since April 2023 the embassy no longer issues passport linkage letters with newly issued passports, and that if a Thai government office asks for one, the cancelled passport together with the new one will suffice — which is the general principle: your two books, read side by side, are the evidence chain.

Which means you should get the cancelled book back and keep it. Consular sections normally return the old passport with a cancellation punch or endorsement rather than destroying it, and that cancelled document is what proves your immigration history. Where the passport was stolen and there is no old book at all, the immigration authority will work from its own entry records, which is slower and is a good reason to have photographed the visa page and the arrival stamp when you landed.

For visas issued by countries other than the one you are standing in, the Thai mission's advice generalizes cleanly: contact the respective country's immigration authority or visa issuing agency, and be prepared to travel carrying both the new and the cancelled passport where that country does not transfer visas. Schengen residence cards, long-stay work and study visas and multi-entry business visas are all in this category and none of them can be sorted out by a US embassy.

Exit control is the trap. A number of countries check on departure that your entry was lawful and recorded, and a new passport with no arrival stamp in it looks exactly like an overstay unless you can show the chain. Sort the transfer out before you go to the airport, not at the airport, and if the timing makes that impossible, ask the consular section for a letter or ask the immigration office for a written note recording the position.

If your onward plans involve a country you have not yet visited, remember that the visa you applied for months ago may be tied to the passport number you no longer have. Some countries treat an electronic authorization as tied to the traveler and some tie it to the document. Check with the issuing authority — this is not something the US mission can answer, and our guide to US visas and ESTA explains the same logic from the other direction, for people travelling into the United States.

If the passport went with a wallet, the second problem is cash. Consular posts help with the logistics rather than the money: the US Mission in Mexico describes helping citizens contact family so funds can be sent, and points to commercial transfer services as the fastest route, with the recipient needing the confirmation number, the sender's full name and phone number, and the sending office's details — and a passport to collect, which is a circularity worth spotting early. Sort the emergency passport first where you can.

Where there is genuinely no other option, the State Department can make a loan. USAGov describes temporary repatriation or evacuation loans as a last resort for citizens with no other means, arranged through the nearest embassy or consulate, and repayable to the government through Pay.gov. The Mexico mission's version is franker about the conditions: applicants must meet strict criteria, the loan will not be used to pay existing debts, and the borrower is not permitted to leave the United States again until the full amount is repaid.

That last condition has statutory teeth. Under 22 CFR 51.60, the Department may not issue a passport — except for direct return to the United States — to an applicant who is in default on a repatriation loan received from the United States, and the same section makes unpaid emergency assistance loans a discretionary ground for refusal. A repatriation loan is a real debt with a real consequence for your next passport, and that is the reason to exhaust family transfers and card issuers first.

Airlines are usually more flexible than travelers expect once there is a documented consular process in train. Carriers deal with this regularly, and a rebooking made with a reference to a consular appointment date lands better than one made without. Do not, however, book a non-refundable replacement flight before the post has told you when the document will exist — the emergency book is fast at many posts but it is not guaranteed, and approval is at the consular officer's discretion.

For the leg back into the United States, the rule is statutory and it applies to you personally. Section 215 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, at 8 U.S.C. 1185(b), makes it unlawful for a US citizen to depart from or enter the United States without bearing a valid US passport, subject to exceptions the President may prescribe. The US Mission in the United Kingdom spells out what this means for dual nationals: a person holding both a US and a foreign passport must enter and leave the United States on the US passport and may not use the foreign one, and this applies to children as well as adults.

So a dual national's second passport solves the problem of getting out of the country you are in and does not solve the problem of getting into the United States. There are narrow statutory exceptions and emergency waivers, but they are not something to plan a flight around. If you hold another nationality, use it to move if that is easier and still get the US emergency passport before you head home.