The Henley Passport Index is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom allowed by those countries' ordinary passports for their citizens.[3] It was launched in 2005 as Henley & PartnersVisa Restrictions Index[4] and was updated to Henley Passport Index in January 2018.[5]
The index annually ranks 199 passports of the world by the number of countries that their holders can travel to without requiring a visa.[6] The number of countries that a specific passport can access becomes its visa-free "score". The data is obtained from the International Air Transport Association (IATA)'s[7]Timatic documentation requirements database.[4][8]
Definition of the index
The Henley Passport index ranks passports according to the number of destinations that can be reached using a particular country's ordinary passport without the need of a prior visa ("visa-free").[9][10][11] The survey ranks 199 passports against 227 destination[12]countries, territories, and micro-states.[13][14][15]
The IATA maintains a database of travel information worldwide and all destinations that are in the IATA database are considered by the index.[16] However, because not all territories issue passports, there are far fewer passports ranked than destinations about which queries are made.[17]
Method
To determine the score for each country or territory,[18] its passport is checked against the IATA Timatic database in several steps:
Each of the 199 passports on the list is checked against all 227 possible travel destinations for which travel restriction information exists in the IATA database. The score is updated throughout the year.[19]
Each query must satisfy certain conditions:
passport is issued in the country of nationality
passport holder is an adult citizen of the country that issued the passport and a lone traveller, not part of a tourist group
entry is sought for tourism or business
the stay is a minimum of three days
Further conditions:
queries are made only for holders of normal passports, not diplomatic, service, emergency, or temporary passports; and other travel documents are disregarded
passport holders need not meet any complex requirements for entry (for example, possessing a government-issued letter, translations, or empty pages)
passport holders have all necessary vaccinations and certificates
passport holders are arriving at and departing from the same airport
passport holders are seeking a short stay rather than a transit
the port of entry is a major city or capital, in cases where this is required
requirements by the destination country or territory regarding a particular length of validity of passports are disregarded
passport holders meet all basic requirements for entry (for example, holding a hotel reservation or having proof of sufficient funds or return tickets)
advance passenger information and advance approval to board are not considered to be a visa requirement or travel restriction, neither is the requirement to pay airport tax
If no visa is required for passport holders from a particular country or territory to enter the destination, then that passport scores 1. The passport also scores 1 if a visa on arrival, a visitor's permit, or an automatically approved electronic travel authority (ETA) can be obtained because they do not require manual pre-departure government approval, perhaps because of specific visa-waiver programs in place.[20]
Where visas are needed, or where passport holders must get manually government-approved electronic visas (e-Visas) before departure, a score of 0 is given. If passport holders must get government approval before leaving in order to obtain a visa on arrival, this also scores 0.[20]
The score for each passport is then totalled by adding up its scores for all destinations.[20]
The index ignores temporary restrictions or airspace closures.[21]
It considers mobility data based on national GDPs and the percentage of global wealth that the country's passport could provide access to.[22]
Rankings
2024 Henley Passport Index
As of 16 July 2024, the Singaporean passport offers holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to a total of 195 countries[23] and territories,[24] followed by the Japanese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish passports offer holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to a total of 192 countries followed by the Austrian, Finnish, Irish, Luxembourgish, Dutch, South Korean and Swedish passports, each offering 191 visa-free or visa-on-arrival countries and territories to its holders.[25] These rankings were subsequently followed by the Belgian, Danish, New Zealand, Norwegian, Swiss, and British passports, each offering visa-free or visa-on-arrival travel to 190 countries and territories.[26] While the 2024 Henley Passport Index shows a worldwide improvement in access to visa-free travel, the gap between the top and the bottom ranked countries has widened.[27]
Asian countries like Japan and Singapore have dominated the top position in the Index for the last five years.[28]
The Afghan passport has once again been labelled by the index as the least powerful passport in the world, with its nationals only able to visit 28 destinations visa-free.[29][30] This was followed by the Syrian passport at 29 destinations, the Iraqi passport at 31 destinations and the Pakistani and Yemini passports at 34 destinations. Among African countries, the Somali passport is the weakest passport according to the index.[31]
As of 8 December 2023, the Singaporean passport offered holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to a total of 195 countries[23] and territories,[24] followed by the Japanese with 193 and the Finnish, French, German, Italian, South Korean, Spanish and Swedish passports, each offering 190 visa-free or visa-on-arrival countries and territories to its holders. These rankings were subsequently followed by the Austrian, Danish, Luxembourgeois and British passports, each offering visa-free or visa-on-arrival travel to 189 countries and territories.
An Afghan passport had once again been labelled by the index as the least powerful passport in the world, with its nationals only able to visit 27 destinations visa-free.[29][32] This was followed by the Iraqi passport at 29 destinations and the Syrian passport at 30 destinations.[33]
As of 2022, a Japanese passport offered its holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to a total of 193 countries and territories, with South Korean and Singapore passports each offering 192 visa-free or visa-on-arrival countries and territories to their holders.[34][35] An American passport offered its holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 186 countries and territories, with the British passport offering 187 visa-free or visa-on-arrival countries and territories to their holders. Canadian and Australian passports each offered their holders visa-free access to 185 countries and territories.[36]
An Afghan passport had once again been labelled by the index as the least powerful passport in the world, with its nationals only able to visit 27 destinations visa-free.[37]
In the table below, the "access" columns denote the number of visa-free destinations for holders of that passport.
Unless indicated otherwise, the data in this table is taken from these sources.[38][39]
^Andrejevic, Mark and Volcic, Zala (2016). Commercial Nationalism: Selling the Nation and Nationalizing the Sell. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. ISBN9781137500984
^ abc"Henley Passport Index 2006 to 2018". Henley & Partners Passport Index. Henley & Partners Holdings Ltd. Archived from the original on 9 July 2018. Retrieved 7 July 2018. The index and its contents are based on data provided by the International Air Transport Authority (IATA) and supplemented, enhanced, and updated using extensive in-house research and open-source online data.
Bai, Jianyin; Chen, Yin; Long, Yong (2021). "The structural equivalence of tourism cooperative network in the Belt and Road Initiative Area". Environmental Research. 197: 111043. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2021.111043. PMID33811863.
Bagchi, Pushpi (2021). "The Politics of a Passport to Design Practice". Perspectives on Design and Digital Communication II: Research, Innovations and Best Practices. Springer International Publishing. pp. 273–287. ISBN978-3-030-75867-7.
Boatcă, Manuela (2021). "Unequal institutions in the longue durée: citizenship through a Southern lens". Third World Quarterly. 42 (9): 1982–2000. doi:10.1080/01436597.2021.1923398.
Dervin, Fred; Jacobsson, Andreas (2021). "Engaging Critically with Travel/Tourism and Interculturality". Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality. Springer International Publishing. pp. 133–148. ISBN978-3-030-66337-7.
Okagbue, Hilary I.; Oguntunde, Pelumi E.; Bishop, Sheila A.; Adamu, Patience I.; Akhmetshin, Elvir M.; Iroham, Chukwuemeka O. (2021). "Significant Predictors of Henley Passport Index". Journal of International Migration and Integration. 22 (1): 21–32. doi:10.1007/s12134-019-00726-4. ISSN1874-6365.
