This is going to relate only to US citizens because that is what I am and the only nationality that I have experience with doing what the title of this article states.

The short answer is that it is actually quite easy to get a new passport overseas but the longer answer is "it depends on a lot of things."

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I have experience with getting a new passport while overseas twice. In my situation neither acquisition of a new passport was impossible or even all that difficult but this was for a couple of very good reasons.

Does the country you are in have a USA embassy / consulate

This is obviously important because you will need to be able to actually talk to someone that has the ability to get you a new passport. The US has an embassy or consulate in nearly every country in the world so there is a better than average chance that you are going to be able to perform the process overseas. If they do not have local capabilities of processing a new passport for you they are going to have to acquire it from another Embassy or even the Department of State back in the USA. If this is the case you better be prepared to wait a while.

In my case it was only a situation of waiting about a week for the new passport but I was in rather heavily traveled countries for Americans at the time: Once it was in Costa Rica and another was in Malaysia. The US embassies in both of these countries are relative fortresses and they can do almost anything there. So that is item number one: Does the country you are in have the ability to even process this information?

Do you have your old passport

A lot of things can happen to a passport that is going to muck up your travels. This can include accidentally washing it in the laundry (I did that once) and while this is a problem since all of your past stamps are going to be washed out as well, the Embassy is capable of working with local authorities to figure out when your visa expires and get you a new one. Another thing can be something that I only read about but a kid or some idiot friend could decide to mark all over your passport and thereby make it ineligible for use.

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That was a pretty funny story that I don't remember all the details about but I know it had a happy ending and made the couple and their kid quite famous for a while. All I learned from it is that people need to keep a better eye on their kids. Regardless, the passport can be verified and replaced by the Embassy or Consulate.

The real problem that can arise is if you have lost your passport or it was stolen. The latter doesn't happen very often anymore because with new digital data being the backbone of most country's passports, there isn't much incentive to steal anyone's passport since it wont be useable from that point forward. I suppose there could be a land crossing somewhere in the world that it might still work but is the person who is in possession of a stolen passport honestly willing to put themselves in very dire consequences by trying to do so? I don't think many people are likely to try to pull this off.

Losing your passport makes you a real dope because if there is one thing that you definitely need to keep track of, it would be your only legal form of identification while abroad. something kind of funny just happened: As I was writing that last sentence I looked to my left where I normally keep my passport and noticed it wasn't there. I had a bit of a "freak out" moment as I went and looked for it in my room. It's still here but I had a moment there where my mind went wild with how ironic it would be if I was lecturing people about the importance of knowing where your passport is and keeping it, and also losing my own.

Moving on: If you do NOT have your old passport getting a new one can be a very serious and difficult matter to overcome. They aren't just going to take your word for it that you are who you say you are and things are going to have to be done to verify your identity. It will DEFINITELY take a long time to get this done... to the point where there is a better than average chance that you are going to have overstayed your visa by the time you get a new one. There is only so much that an Embassy can do for you in a foreign country so you are probably going to get in trouble, mostly financial trouble, if this happens to you.

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Another one of my situations of getting a new passport was simply because I wanted a new one and was investigating if it was possible and easy enough to accomplish without going back to the States to get it done. It was easy but ended up costing about double what it would cost if I was State-side. Since the flight back to the US was going to be a lot more than the cost of replacing a passport overseas, I went for the latter.

The Embassy staff in Costa Rica were very willing to help with this and since I had my old passport, the only other thing I had to do was get my hands on US dollars since that was the only currency that they would accept. I found this strange since they are literally in Costa Rica but wouldn't accept that country's currency. I guess they mail the US dollars back home? That doesn't seem very efficient!

So in a shell, reissuing a passport overseas in most of the world is actually a pretty easy thing to accomplish if you are American. It also is a lot less expensive than flying back to get it done there. Just keep in mind that if you are planning to do this intentionally that it is extremely important that you make sure the country that you are going to do this in actually has the ability to do it before you go there.

Maybe that seems obvious to most of you out there but I have met a lot of a really stupid people when I was traveling and yes, a lot of them were Americans.