diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/55929-vmware_vm_inventory-skip_orphan_vm.yml b/changelogs/fragments/55929-vmware_vm_inventory-skip_orphan_vm.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..bb7ce15693e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/55929-vmware_vm_inventory-skip_orphan_vm.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+minor_changes:
+- Skip orphan VMs from inventory while running vmware_vm_inventory as VMs does not return any facts (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/55929).
diff --git a/lib/ansible/plugins/inventory/vmware_vm_inventory.py b/lib/ansible/plugins/inventory/vmware_vm_inventory.py
index 165919b8538..a326cb8c4de 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/plugins/inventory/vmware_vm_inventory.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/plugins/inventory/vmware_vm_inventory.py
@@ -411,6 +411,10 @@ class InventoryModule(BaseInventoryPlugin, Cacheable):
                 # VMware does not provide a way to uniquely identify VM by its name
                 # i.e. there can be two virtual machines with same name
                 # Appending "_" and VMware UUID to make it unique
+                if not vm_obj.obj.config:
+                    # Sometime orphaned VMs return no configurations
+                    continue
+
                 current_host = vm_obj_property.val + "_" + vm_obj.obj.config.uuid
 
                 if current_host not in hostvars: