Singapore is once again the world’s most powerful passport, according to latest Henley Passport Index ranking, breaking away from the shared top spot with five other countries earlier this year.
The city-state also sets a new record score, with its citizens now enjoying access to 195 travel destinations out of 227 around the world visa-free.
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain drop to joint-second place, each with visa-free access to 192 destinations, and an unprecedented seven-nation cohort, each with access to 191 destinations without a prior visa.
Austria, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, South Korea, and Sweden now sit in third place on the ranking, which is based on exclusive and official data from the International Air Transport Association.
Meanwhile, the UK is in fourth place along with Belgium, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, and Switzerland, despite its visa-free destination score falling to 190. The US drops down to the eighth spot, with access to just 186 destinations visa-free.
Former passport powerhouses, the UK and the US jointly held first place on the index 10 years ago in 2014.
The UAE makes it into the Top 10 for the first time, having added 152 destinations since the index’s inception in 2006 to achieve its current visa-free score of 185, and rising 53 places in the ranking from 62nd to ninth position in the process.
China is also among the Top 10 countries, jumping up 24 places from 83rd to 59th (with access to 85 destinations visa-free) since 2014.
Afghanistan remains as the world’s weakest passport, losing access to yet another destination over the past six months, leaving its citizens with access to only 26 countries visa-free — the lowest score ever recorded in history of the 19-year-old index.
According to the latest index published, the Top 20 ‘most open’ countries are all small island nations or African states, with the exception of Cambodia. There are 13 completely open countries in the world that offer visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to all 198 passports in the world (not counting their own).
The top five countries with the biggest (negative) difference between their own visa-free access and their openness to other nations are Somalia, Sri Lanka, Djibouti, Burundi, and Nepal, and the top five with the least discrepancy between their access and their openness are Singapore, Bahamas, Malaysia, Hong Kong (SAR China), and Barbados.
Commenting in the July 2024 edition of the Henley Global Mobility Report, Christian H Kaelin, chairman of Henley & Partners and the inventor of the passport index concept, said: “The general trend over the past two decades has been towards greater travel freedom, with the global average number of destinations travellers are able to access visa-free nearly doubling from 58 in 2006 to 111 in 2024.
“However, the global mobility gap between those at the top and bottom of the index is now wider than it has ever been, with top-ranked Singapore able to access a record-breaking 169 more destinations visa-free than Afghanistan.”
