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A ranking of the world’s most powerful passports released this week shows that the global mobility gap is “wider than ever,” Henley & Partners, the firm behind the list, said in a news release. Passports from the countries topping the list, largely wealthy nations in Europe, have access to 190-plus destinations visa-free, while countries at the bottom, typically low-income countries in the Global South, have access to as few as 28, according to the rankings.
The list, based on data from the International Air Transport Association, highlights the realities of passport privilege: For some, a passport is a key to the world, while for others, it’s a lock on it. Here are the rankings.
The most powerful passports
Smooth, visa-free travel essentially means carrying a European passport or being from one of a handful of high-income Asian countries, according to the rankings. Four E.U. member states — France, Germany, Italy, and Spain — moved to the top of the list this year, joining Japan and Singapore, economic powerhouses that have dominated global passport rankings over the past five years. The United States, which topped the list a decade ago, held its place at seventh, tied with Canada and Hungary.
Trevor Williams, former chief economist at Lloyds Bank, said in a statement that the “overarching narrative that links greater economic performance with visa-free access” is “once again powerfully highlighted” by the latest report.
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Singapore and Spain: visa-free entry to 194 destinations.Finland, South Korea and Sweden: visa-free entry to 193 destinations.Austria, Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands: visa-free entry to 192 destinations.Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom: visa-free entry to 191 destinations.Greece, Malta and Switzerland: visa-free entry to 190 destinations.
The least powerful passports
Travel restrictions have decreased globally, with the average number of destinations travelers can visit visa-free nearly doubling since 2006, according to Henley & Partners, which advises wealthy people on residence and citizenship by investment. But not all countries have benefited from this increased access, and inequality between the wealthy and poorer countries has widened.
Dutch professors Henk van Houtum and Annelies van Uden liken visas to “paper prisons” in a 2021 paper, writing that “affluent countries are excluding those who are seen as an economic or security risk, notably the global poor.” Such policies allow for what they call “a global aristocracy principally determined by birth” to lock in “a global underclass, and from afar.”
Afghanistan: visa-free entry to 28 destinations.Syria: visa-free entry to 29 destinations.Iraq: visa-free entry to 31 destinations.Pakistan: visa-free entry to 34 destinations.Yemen: visa-free entry to 35 destinations.
The passports with the most dramatic shifts
Changes in passport mobility happen when countries add or remove visa requirements for travelers of other nationalities. Canada, for instance, opened visa-free travel to 13 new countries last year, while the United Kingdom announced it would impose visa requirements on Hondurans in response to an uptick in asylum applications at the border.
The United Arab Emirates has seen the greatest shift in power in the past decade, jumping from 55th to 11th, by adding a “impressive” 106 destinations to the visa-free score, Henley & Partners said. China and Ukraine also saw significant shifts, both gaining 21 destinations for visa-free entry over the past 10 years.