Lost your passport abroad: how to get an emergency travel document

An emergency travel document is a one-off travel document issued by the FCDO to a British national who is outside the UK and needs to travel before a passport can be obtained. GOV.UK's description is deliberately narrow: it is usually only valid for one single or return journey, and it permits travel through a maximum of five countries. Everything else about the way it behaves follows from those two limits.

The eligibility conditions are cumulative rather than alternative, and all of them have to be true at once. GOV.UK says you can apply if you are a British national, you are outside the UK, you need to travel within six weeks, your passport is lost, stolen, damaged, full, recently expired or held by the authorities, you cannot renew or replace it before you travel, and you have previously held a valid UK passport issued on or after 1 January 2006. Fail any one of them and you are on a different route, described later on this page.

It is not a passport. It does not renew, replace or extend anything, it does not carry your passport number forward, and it does not remove the need to make a full replacement application when you get home. Nor is it a general-purpose identity document — it exists to get you across a defined set of borders on a defined journey and then to stop existing in any useful sense.

It is also not a substitute for the urgent services people know about from the UK. GOV.UK's 'Get a passport urgently' page carries an explicit exclusion: if you are outside the UK, apply for an emergency travel document instead. Both the 1 Week Fast Track and the 1 Day Premium services require you to be in the UK to book and attend an appointment at a passport office, so the £192 Fast Track fee that would have solved this at home buys you nothing in a hotel in Lisbon.

The alternative to an ETD is the ordinary overseas passport application. GOV.UK runs a separate service for British nationals who want to renew or apply for a British passport from overseas, and that is the right route if your travel is genuinely weeks away rather than days. The ETD exists for the gap between those two things: travel that is too soon for a passport application and too important to abandon.

One practical consequence of the single-journey framing is that an ETD does not restore your ability to move around freely while you are still abroad. If you were three days into a two-week trip when the passport went, the ETD gets you home or onward on one specified journey — it does not let you carry on with the itinerary and then use the same document to fly back later unless the return leg was built into the application.

GOV.UK puts this before everything else in its 'How to apply' guidance, and it is right to. Before you apply, you must check that an emergency travel document will be accepted in all the countries you plan to travel to or through, and you must check the visa requirements for those countries as well. This is not a formality. Acceptance is a decision each country makes for itself, and the FCDO cannot compel any border authority to admit a person travelling on one.

Work the route backwards from the ticket rather than forwards from the map. The five-country limit counts countries you pass through, not just countries you stop in, so a one-stop flight home already consumes three of the five before you have added anything. Open-jaw itineraries, overland legs and connections through a third country are where people quietly exceed the limit without noticing, and a document issued for the wrong route is no more use than no document at all.

Airside transit is its own question and needs to be asked as its own question. Some countries treat a passenger who never clears immigration differently from one who does, and others do not distinguish at all. The only reliable answers come from the authorities of the country concerned or from the airline, which carries the liability if it boards someone who is then refused entry — so ask the airline directly, in writing where you can, and ask before you buy anything.

The FCDO's own foreign travel advice covers 226 countries and territories and includes entry requirements alongside safety, health and legal information. It is the sensible first stop for the entry rules on your route, though it will not always answer the ETD question specifically, and where it does not you fall back on the embassy of the country you are transiting.

Do not assume the old passport can bridge a gap in the route. The FCDO's Spain travel advice puts the general position plainly: you will be denied entry if you do not have a valid travel document, or if you try to use a passport that has been reported lost or stolen. Interpol makes the same point from the other side — once you report a document lost or stolen it becomes invalid, and attempting to travel with it results in denial of entry or boarding, with the document seized.

Interpol's Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database is why that is not a theoretical risk. It holds around 138 million records of documents reported stolen, lost, revoked, invalid or stolen blank, and Interpol reports it was searched 3.6 billion times in 2023, producing 232,423 positive matches. Airlines can screen against it at the point of booking through Interpol's I-Checkit service, which means a cancelled passport can now fail at the ticket counter rather than at the border.

Fix the route before you touch the form, because the route is what you are buying. GOV.UK states that if your travel plans change you will need to apply again and pay the £125 fee again, and it is non-refundable. There is no amendment process and no discount for a second attempt at the same journey.

The online service is the main route and it is short. GOV.UK's ETD service says the form takes around fifteen minutes to complete, and it is open to British nationals who are abroad, need to travel urgently, and have held a UK passport issued on or after 1 January 2006. You start it from the 'How to apply' section of the GOV.UK emergency travel document guide.

You need four things to finish it: a valid digital photo that meets the passport photo guidelines and has not been used in a previous application, a contact telephone number, an email address, and a debit or credit card to pay with. The email address matters more than it looks — every subsequent instruction, including the one telling you how and when to collect the document, arrives there.

The photo rules are the ordinary passport photo rules, and they reject more applications than anything else in the process. HM Passport Office requires the image to be at least 600 pixels wide by 750 pixels tall, between 50KB and 10MB, in colour, clear and in focus, unaltered by software, taken within the last month, against a plain light-coloured background with no shadows on your face or behind you. You must face the camera with a neutral expression and your mouth closed, with nothing covering your face and no glasses unless you need them for medical reasons. GOV.UK notes that photos taken in a booth or shop are more likely to be accepted than one you take yourself.

The fee is £125 and GOV.UK states plainly that it is not refunded. If your card has gone with the passport — which is the usual case in a theft — a relative or friend can pay for you through the online service. Say so early to whoever is helping you at home, because a payment that has not cleared is one of the situations GOV.UK lists as a cause of delay.

You can apply on behalf of another British national who cannot apply themselves. For a child under 16 the rules tighten: GOV.UK says both parents or legal guardians must attend the appointment, or one must provide a signed letter of consent if they cannot attend. A family travelling together needs a separate application, and a separate £125, for every person whose passport is missing.

Complete the form in one sitting if you can, and have the details of the lost passport to hand if you have them — a photograph of the data page stored somewhere other than the bag the passport was in is worth more at this moment than any travel gadget you own. Where you cannot answer a question about the old document, answer honestly rather than guessing; a wrong passport number is one of the things that turns a two-working-day application into a longer one.

This is the step people duplicate, and duplicating it is worse than skipping it. GOV.UK's ETD guidance states that your old passport is usually cancelled automatically once you have paid for the emergency travel document. The cancellation is part of the process, not a prerequisite to it.

The separate GOV.UK service for cancelling a lost or stolen passport says the same thing from its own side. Its instruction is to cancel a lost or stolen passport as soon as possible — but it carves out this exact scenario, telling anyone who needs to travel urgently from abroad that they do not need to cancel the passport now, because it will be cancelled as part of the emergency travel document application.

Cancellation is close to irreversible once it has taken effect, and that is the point of it: it removes a live British identity document from circulation. What it also means is that finding the passport in a jacket pocket two days later does not undo anything. The document in your hand becomes a souvenir, and you are still travelling on the ETD you paid for.

So the sequencing rule is narrow but firm. If you are sure the passport is gone and you need to travel within six weeks, apply for the ETD and let the application handle the cancellation. If you are not yet sure it is gone — it was last seen inside your own accommodation, nothing else is missing, and your flight is not imminent — searching for another few hours costs you nothing that a cancellation does not cost you far more of.

Where the passport was stolen rather than mislaid, the calculation changes completely and speed wins. A stolen British passport is a usable identity document for as long as it remains uncancelled, and the risk of it being used to open accounts or cross borders in your name outweighs any inconvenience the cancellation creates for you.

Report the theft to the local police as well as applying for the ETD. A local police report is what a travel insurer will expect, it is frequently what the consulate will ask about, and in some countries it is what allows you to explain to immigration on departure why you are leaving on a document you did not arrive on. The FCDO's consular network can tell you how to report a crime locally and what support is available, but it cannot make the report for you.

GOV.UK's published expectation is that your emergency travel document will usually be ready to collect two working days after you apply. Read both halves of that sentence: two working days, and from when you apply rather than from when you decide to. A Friday afternoon application in a country with a Sunday-Monday weekend is not a Sunday collection.

After you apply you are kept informed by email, and GOV.UK says you will be told how and when you can get your document and whether you need an appointment at a British embassy, high commission or consulate. That email is the trigger for everything else. Until it arrives you do not know which post you are collecting from, on what day, or whether an appointment is involved at all.

GOV.UK lists five situations where it takes longer than two working days: your passport has expired, the application is for a child under 16, your payment has not yet been processed, more information or documents are needed, or an appointment is required. Three of those five are within your control before you press submit, which is the argument for taking ten extra minutes over the form rather than ten extra minutes over the delay it causes.

The instruction that follows is the one to obey literally: do not book your travel until you get the email telling you how and when you can get your emergency travel document. Booking on the assumption of a two-working-day turnaround and then hitting one of the five delay conditions produces a ticket you cannot use and a document issued for a route you are no longer taking — which, because plan changes mean reapplying, costs another £125.

Find your collection point in advance so you are not doing it on the day. GOV.UK maintains a country-by-country directory of British embassies, high commissions and consulates, including consulates general, deputy high commissions and honorary consulates, and it tells you what to do where there is no British representation — normally to contact the mission in a neighbouring country. Appointments at posts are arranged through the FCDO's 24-hour Consular Contact Centre.

Plan the journey to the post itself. In a large country the nearest consulate may be a domestic flight away, and a domestic flight generally means presenting identification you no longer have. Ask the Consular Contact Centre about this specifically when you speak to them, because the answer depends entirely on the country you are in and on what documents you still hold.

The online service is closed to you, and the bar for getting an ETD at all is materially higher. GOV.UK's guidance for travelling urgently from abroad without a UK passport says that if you have not previously held a UK passport issued on or after 1 January 2006, you would normally need to make a standard passport application instead.

The exception is narrow and is framed around urgency rather than importance. GOV.UK says you may still be able to get an emergency travel document if you are a British national or entitled to British citizenship, you are abroad, you need to travel within six weeks, and you need to travel urgently and unexpectedly because of exceptional circumstances. The examples it gives are the unexpected birth of a child, urgent medical treatment that is not available where you are, and the funeral of a close relative.

It is equally explicit about what does not qualify, and this is where most refusals come from. GOV.UK states that you cannot get an emergency travel document for activities such as holidays, weddings, family events and job interviews. A wedding you are travelling to is a family event; a funeral is an exceptional circumstance. That distinction is the whole test, and it is drawn more tightly than most travellers expect.

The route is a contact form rather than the online application. GOV.UK directs applicants in this position to complete a contact form and to provide evidence both of British nationality and of the exceptional circumstances behind the travel, with each case assessed individually by the FCDO. Assume this takes longer than two working days, because two separate things are being established: who you are, and why the journey cannot wait.

Assemble the nationality evidence before you make contact. A full birth certificate, a naturalisation or registration certificate, a parent's British passport details, or records of a previous British passport all speak to the same question — whether you are a British national — and producing them together is faster than producing them one at a time in response to successive queries.

Where the circumstances are genuinely exceptional, document them in the same package. A hospital letter, a death certificate or a funeral director's confirmation does more than a description of the situation, and it is the material the FCDO says it needs to see.

The FCDO's consular network operates around the clock and is reachable from anywhere. You can contact the nearest British embassy, high commission or consulate, or the FCDO in London on +44 (0)20 7008 5000, selecting the option for consular services for British nationals. The department's own contact page says you can call at any time in an emergency, and the Consular Contact Centre is also how appointments at posts are booked.

What consular staff can do covers more ground than most people assume: emergency travel documents, help after an accident, arrest or hospitalisation, support for victims of crime, assistance in crises such as natural disasters and civil unrest, and access to lists of local lawyers, translators, interpreters and funeral directors. What they cannot do is take on matters that belong to other UK government departments, and the FCDO states directly that it cannot make UK visa appointments for non-British nationals.

Money is the area where expectations and reality diverge most sharply. The FCDO's guidance on your finances when travelling abroad says it can deposit money on your behalf in exceptional circumstances, but only where no other transfer service is available. That route is slower than a commercial transfer, requires you to attend a British embassy, high commission or consulate in person, and carries a fee. The first call is still to a friend or relative and an ordinary transfer service.

Emergency loans exist and are genuinely a last resort. The FCDO says a loan will not automatically be offered even if you have no other way of returning home, and that where one is made it can only cover basic costs such as the cheapest one-way ticket to the UK. It cannot cover medical bills, legal costs, visa fines, unpaid accommodation or medical repatriation.

The conditions attached to a loan are strict and worth knowing before you ask. You must sign an undertaking to repay, and the loan must be repaid within six months. You must give your passport to the FCDO, which sends it to HM Passport Office, and in exchange you receive an emergency travel document valid only for a single journey to your country of residence. Your passport is returned once the loan is repaid in full, provided it is still valid.

That last mechanism is the one to understand clearly, because it changes what the ETD is for. In the emergency loan scenario the document is not a convenience — it is the instrument by which the FCDO gets you home while holding your travel rights until the debt is settled. If you have any other option, including a transfer from home, take it.

Travel insurance is what stands between you and all of this, and the FCDO says so. Its foreign travel insurance guidance sets out what a policy should cover, including treatment in state or private hospitals, repatriation, and getting home after medical treatment when you cannot use your original ticket. It also warns that travelling to a destination the FCDO advises against can invalidate your policy entirely — which matters here because a claim for a lost passport and an emergency document is exactly the kind of claim a technically void policy will refuse.

The emergency travel document is spent when the journey it was issued for ends. It is not a passport, it does not renew into one, and it leaves you in the UK holding no valid travel document at all. The replacement application is a separate exercise with its own fee, its own photograph and its own identity checks, and it does not start until you make it.

Start it sooner than feels necessary. A replacement for a lost or stolen passport is not processed like a renewal — HM Passport Office requires someone to confirm your identity, which an ordinary adult renewal does not, and applications of this type routinely run beyond the standard published timescale. If you have onward travel in the next few months, treat the replacement as urgent from the day you land rather than from the day the next trip appears on the calendar.

Your new passport will carry a different number from the one you lost, and that number is embedded in more places than you would guess. A US ESTA, an unexpired visa that was inside the lost passport, a stored airline or hotel profile, a residence permit reference, a work-permit record — each of those is keyed to the old document and each needs revisiting separately. Unexpired visas issued in a lost passport are a matter for the issuing embassy, not for HM Passport Office.

HM Passport Office's Passport Adviceline is the human route for anything that goes wrong, and it takes calls from abroad. It is on 0300 222 0000 in the UK, +44 (0)300 222 0000 from overseas, and 18001 0300 222 0000 by text relay, open Monday to Friday from 8am to 8pm and 9am to 5:30pm at weekends and on UK bank holidays. It handles general advice about British passports as well as urgent cases involving medical treatment, serious illness or a death.

Make the insurance claim while the paperwork is fresh. The £125 ETD fee, the cost of the replacement passport, an unused ticket and any accommodation the delay forced on you are all potentially recoverable, and insurers almost universally ask for a police report made promptly after the theft was discovered. Keep the local police report, the ETD payment receipt, the FCDO emails and the boarding passes together in one place.

Finally, do the identity housekeeping that a stolen passport creates and a cancelled one does not fix. Cancelling the document stops it working at a border; it does nothing about your name, date of birth and address being in someone else's hands. Where a passport was taken alongside cards, a driving licence or correspondence showing your address, treat it as an identity theft rather than a lost item and act on that basis.

And take the two-minute precaution that makes the whole of this page shorter next time: photograph the data page of your passport, store it somewhere that is not the bag the passport lives in, and note the FCDO Consular Contact Centre number. GOV.UK's own cancellation service says a photocopy or photograph of the passport helps you answer the questions it asks, and the same is true of the ETD form.