Patrick Clarke
Singapore boasts the world’s most powerful passport, with holders able to visit 192 travel destinations out of 227 around the world visa-free, according to the latest Henley Passport Index from Henley & Partners.
This marks the first time in five years that Japan (third) has been bumped from the top spot.
Germany, Italy and Spain each moved up into second with visa-free access to 190 destinations while Japan, Austria, Finland, France, Luxembourg, South Korea and Sweden rank third with access to 189 destinations without a prior visa.
The United Kingdom is trending up following a six-year decline, climbing two places to fourth for the first time since 2017. Meanwhile, the United States continues to slide down the index, falling from sixth to eighth with access to just 184 destinations visa-free.
“The story is a simple one—by more or less standing still, the U.S. has fallen behind,” says Greg Lindsay, leading global strategist and urban tech fellow at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute. “While its absolute score has in fact risen over the last decade, the U.S. has been steadily overtaken by rivals such as South Korea, Japan and Singapore. America’s relentless slide down the rankings—and unlikelihood of reclaiming the highest position any time soon—is a warning to its neighbor Canada and the rest of the Anglosphere as well.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Afghanistan ranks last on the index, with a visa-free score of just 27. Iraq (29) and Syria (30) round out the bottom three passports.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been one of the biggest winners over the past decade, adding 107 destinations to its visa-free score since 2013 to climb 44 places in the rankings over the past 10 years from 56th to 12th.
According to Dr. Christian H. Kaelin, Chairman of Henley & Partners, the general trend over the history of the 18-year-old ranking has been towards greater travel freedom as the average number of destinations travelers are able to access visa-free nearly doubled from 58 in 2006 to 109 in 2023.
“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 165 more destinations visa-free than Afghanistan,” he said in a statement.
The annual index is based on exclusive and official data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
Courtesy: travelpulse
