The Foreign & Commonwealth Office does its work through a global network of 261 embassies, high commissions and other diplomatic posts.

You can find the office you need via the Find an embassy page and link to their websites and email from there. You will also find useful information such as office hours, telephone and fax numbers, street maps, country profiles and travel advice.

What we do

As well as giving advice on passports, visas, trade and investment we also help in emergencies.

Visit our day-to-day and emergency pages for more details of the help we can give.

Special missions

The UK also runs separate missions or delegations which have permanent offices  at 21 international and European  organisations such as the United Nations, the Council of Europe, NATO and so on. Visit our special missions page for more information.

What we call ourselves

Our diplomatic offices abroad are known by a variety of names:

• in Commonwealth countries they are called high commissions and located in the capital city 
• in other countries they are called embassies. These too are located in the capital city
• mission or delegation is the name usually given to our office attached to organisations like the UN or NATO
• consulates are smaller offices in non-capital cities which offer assistance to British nationals
  
• honorary consulates are smaller versions of consulates. The consular representatives are volunteers and undertake a more restricted range of duties than diplomatic representatives. Their prime task is to protect the interests of the nationals of their countries