When it comes to international travel, the passport is not just an essential item but it is also the key to opening up foreign lands to you. Not all passports are created equal, however! Some passports give access to well over 150 countries without having prior approval (in the form of visa or similar) before departure.
These Two Passports Continue to Be the Most Powerful in the World
Link: Henley Passport Index for 2019 Q3
The Henley Passport Index released their 3rd quarter findings on passports in the world and the top countries with the most access worldwide continue to be Japan and Singapore. The passports of those two countries give visa-free access (not counting visa-on-arrival or similar) to 189 countries.
What is new this time around is that South Korea has dropped a spot to join Germany and Finland in having easy entry to 187 countries. Here are the top 10 spots and how many countries they each have access to:
- Japan and Singapore – 189
- South Korea, Germany, Finland – 187
- Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg – 186
- France, Spain, Sweden – 185
- Austria, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland – 184
- Belgium, Canada, Greece, Ireland, Norway, United Kingdom, United States – 183
- Malta – 182
- Czech Republic – 181
- Australia, Iceland, Lithuania, New Zealand – 180
- Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia – 179
That adds up to 31 countries in the top 10, separated by a total of 10 countries from 1st place to 10th place in terms of access. Of that list of 31, three are in Asia, and 24 of them are in Europe.
The country with the most limited passport is Afghanistan with just 25 countries allowing them simple access. Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan are just marginally better in terms of access with passports.’
According to Henley, this is the lowest position for US and UK passport holders since 2010. In fact, back in 2014, both countries shared the top spot.
With some of the changes from the whole Brexit issue, I wonder how this will affect the UK passport in the coming years.
Featured image courtesy © Can Stock Photo / viperagp
Several months ago there were stories like the following, about the UAE’s passport:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/a-country-no-one-expected-suddenly-has-the-worlds-most-powerful-passport/news-story/1d07af5fb2eca3bb326bd11a8822f94c
And yet where is the UAE in the newest list from Henley?
Different passport indexes seem to calculate things somewhat differently in how to rank passports by country.
Good point. Henley has them listed at #20 but with the same number of countries as the Passport Index shows – 167. Henley’s methodology talks about using IATA numbers as a basis for the data they used.
Henley has this to say “passport holders can obtain a visa on arrival, a visitor’s permit, or an electronic travel authority (ETA) when entering the destination. These visa-types require no pre-departure government approval, because of the specific visa-waiver programs in place.” That is all ranked as a “1” in their score. The Passport Index chooses to break that down more to visualize the rank with Visa on arrival vs visa free waiver. So, it would appear that countries like the US, European countries, and others are penalized on the Passport Index list because of the visa-free waiver numbers.
[…] These Two Passports Remain the Most Powerful in the World & Other Passport Shifts – Running with Miles […]
One passport is not enough, I have 5 of them, which will beat any of those top 10.