Six countries have earned the title of probably the most powerful passports in 2024 — with all of them granting visa-free travel to 194 out of 227 destinations.
4 EU member states now share crown with Singapore and Japan because the primary passport within the quarterly Henley Passport Index. They’re: Spain, Germany, France and Italy.
The 2 Asian countries have dominated the index up to now five years.
In second place are countries like South Korea, Finland and Sweden with visa-free access to 193 destinations. Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands and Austria got here in third. The UK has risen two ranks to fourth.
Australia and Latest Zealand took sixth place, while the U.S. retains its seventh place, based on Henley’s rankings.
The 19-year-old global passport rating was conducted based on data provided by the International Air Transport Authority, or IATA, which ranks the world’s passports based on the variety of destinations their holders can access and not using a prior visa.
The overall trend shown within the rankings has been toward more travel freedom, with the typical variety of destinations that travelers can access visa-free nearly doubling from 58 in 2006 to 111 in 2024, said Christian H. Kaelin, chairman of Henley & Partners.
That said, he noted that the worldwide mobility gap between those at the highest and bottom of the index has turn into “wider than ever.”
For one, the best ranked passports allow travel to 166 more destinations and not using a visa in comparison with Afghanistan, which has access to only 28 countries and is last within the rating.
The United Arab Emirates has been the “biggest climber” of the index over the past decade, leaping from fifty fifth in 2014 to the eleventh position, the report stated.
Other notable improvements in mobility include Ukraine and China, which have climbed two ranks each up to now 12 months. China now places 62nd on the index, while Ukraine is now in thirty second place.
