What’s red on the outside, purple on the inside, and grants you access to 195 destinations around the world visa-free?
It’s the Singapore passport, and it’s just been named the world’s most powerful travel document in a quarterly ranking of the passports with the most international clout.
For the past 19 years, the Henley Passport Index, created by London-based global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners, has been tracking global freedoms in 227 countries and territories around the world, using exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
The next passports to come close to Singapore’s global swag are those of Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, which jointly hold the No.2 spot and whose citizens can enjoy visa-free travel to 192 destinations.
Then, in third place in the ranking, South Korea, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands have the privilege of seamless jaunts to 191 destinations.
The UK, which in the bygone days of 2014 held the top spot jointly with the United States, is in fourth place (190 destinations), alongside New Zealand, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and Switzerland.
Australia and Portugal share the No.5 spot (189 destinations) while the US has dropped down to eighth place, with visa-free access to a modest 186 destinations.
The widening gap
While Singapore’s magic number of 195 is a record high for both Singapore and the ranking, down at the other end of the scale, new lows are also being hit. Afghanistan has long been ranked the world’s weakest passport by the index, but now its citizens can only travel to 26 countries without a visa – the lowest score recorded in the index’s history of nearly two decades.
Christian Kaelin, chair of Henley & Partners, said in a statement, “The global average number of destinations travellers are able to access visa-free has nearly doubled 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.”
Nearly five billion people will take to the skies this year, across 39 million flights, according to estimates by the IATA. However, the real cost of air travel has dropped by over a third in that time, says IATA director general Willie Walsh, with airlines’ profit per passenger now averaging out at just over $6 per passenger, “barely enough for a single espresso in a typical hotel café.”
African mobility
Africa’s richest man, Nigerian-born Aliko Dangote, complained at the recent Africa CEO Forum in Kigali that he needed 35 visas to travel around the continent – way more than a European visitor.
Exclusive new research published in Tuesday’s Henley & Partner report compares Schengen visa rejection rates for African applicants to those from other regions. The findings, by Mehari Taddele Maru, Adjunct Professor at the School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute, and Johns Hopkins University in Italy, were that around 30% of African Schengen visa applicants were rejected, compared to around 10% worldwide. Said Maru, “The European visa system clearly demonstrates a pre-determined bias against African applicants who face a triple whammy: lower passport power, higher visa rejection rates, and consequently, limited economic mobility.”
Multiple indexes
Henley & Partners’ list is one of several indexes created by financial firms to rank global passports according to the access they provide to their citizens.
Arton Capital’s Passport Index takes into consideration the passports of 193 United Nations member countries and six territories – Taiwan, Macao, Hong Kong, Kosovo, the Palestinian territories and the Vatican. Territories annexed to other countries are excluded.
It’s also updated in real-time throughout the year, but its data is gathered by close monitoring of individual governments’ portals. It’s a tool “for people who travel, to provide accurate, simple-to-access information for their travel needs,” Arton Capital’s founder Armand Arton told CNN in 2022.
Arton’s Global Passport Power Rank 2024 puts the United Arab Emirates in the top spot, with a visa-free/visa-on-arrival score of 179.
As for second place, that’s held by Spain (with a score of 178), while France, Germany, Italy Netherlands, Luxembourg, Austria and Switzerland each have a score of 177 and are jointly at No.3.
The most powerful passports for 2024
1. Singapore (195 destinations)
2. France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain (192)
3. Austria, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden (191)
4. Belgium, Denmark, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom (190)
5. Australia, Portugal (189)
6. Greece, Poland (188)
7. Canada, Czechia, Hungary, Malta (187)
8. United States (186)
9. Estonia, Lithuania, United Arab Emirates (185)
10. Iceland, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia (184)
