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It is the thing people fear most and understand least. The good news, and it is genuinely good news, is that this is a well-worn administrative path that consulates deal with constantly, and in most places you can be traveling again within a few days. The bad news is that the order of operations matters enormously, and panic makes people do steps three and four before step one.
Step 1 — Report it to the local police, and get paperwork
Do this first, before anything else, even if you are fairly sure it is lost rather than stolen.
You need a written police report with a reference number. Your embassy will usually want to see it. Your insurer will almost certainly require it, and many policies impose a short reporting deadline — often twenty-four hours — after which a claim can be refused outright.
If the police station cannot produce a report in a language you read, that is fine. Get whatever document they issue, photograph it immediately, and keep the original.
Step 2 — Contact your embassy or consulate
Find the nearest one for your nationality. Most have an emergency line that operates outside office hours, and most publish exactly what they need before you arrive, which is worth reading rather than turning up and hoping.
You will typically be issued one of two things:
A full replacement passport, which takes longer but leaves you with a normal document.
An emergency travel document, issued far faster, valid for a limited route and a limited time — usually enough to get you home or to a specific destination. If your flight is in two days, this is almost always the answer.
A photograph of your passport’s photo page, stored somewhere you can reach without the passport — email it to yourself, and keep a paper copy in a different bag. Consulates can work from it, and it turns “we need to establish who you are” into a much shorter conversation.
Step 3 — What they will ask you for
Expect some combination of: the police report, proof of identity and citizenship (the passport copy, a driving licence, a birth certificate copy, a national ID), passport-style photographs, your travel itinerary, a completed application, and a fee. Many consulates now handle the fee electronically and some do not — carry a card and some cash.
Passport photographs are available almost everywhere in the world, usually within walking distance of any consulate, and frequently from a small shop that exists for precisely this reason. This is rarely the bottleneck people fear.
Step 4 — Tell the people who need to know
In this order: your travel insurer, because of the reporting deadline; your airline, because a name on a ticket that no longer matches a valid document needs sorting before the airport, not at it; and your accommodation, who in many countries are legally required to register your document with the authorities and will need the new number.
If your cards went with the passport — and they usually did, because they were in the same bag — freeze them from your banking app before you do anything else on this list. Money you can replace. A frozen card you can unfreeze. A drained account takes months.
Step 5 — Understand the exit-stamp problem
This is the part nobody warns you about. Your entry stamp was in the lost passport. Your new document has no record of when or how you entered the country, and in some places that is treated as a serious administrative problem on the way out.
Ask the consulate specifically about this, and ask what the local immigration authority requires. In many countries it is a simple matter of visiting an immigration office with your police report to have your entry re-recorded. In a few, it takes longer than getting the passport did. Knowing which situation you are in early is what stops it becoming a missed flight.
The policy with the reporting deadline
Most policies give you a short window — often 24 hours — to report a theft, and miss it and the claim is gone. Worth having one you have actually read before the day you need it.
The habits that make this a bad afternoon instead of a bad week
Never carry the passport when you do not need it. In most countries a photograph or photocopy is entirely sufficient for day-to-day identification, and the passport should be in the accommodation safe. The main reasons to have it on you are travel days and specific transactions like collecting money or checking in.
Split your documents. Passport in one place, a copy in another, one card in a different pocket to the others, some emergency cash somewhere separate entirely. One theft should never take everything.
Store the copies where you can get them without your phone. If the bag went, the phone may have gone with it. An email to yourself is reachable from any hotel computer or internet café; a photo in your phone gallery is not.
Know where your consulate is in the country you are in. Thirty seconds of looking it up on arrival, and you never need it again — until the one time you do.
The bottom line
Police report first, consulate second, insurer and airline third, and ask specifically about the exit stamp. Consulates process this constantly and are considerably more helpful than the anxiety suggests. The single thing that shortens all of it is a photograph of your photo page taken before you left — which costs you nothing today and buys you days of your trip back if it ever happens.
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