With historical data spanning over 19 years, the Henley Passport Index is the original ranking of all the world’s passports according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a prior visa.
The Index compares the visa-free access of 199 different passports to 227 travel destinations.
Singapore reclaims its crown as the most powerful passport in the world with visa-free access to 195 out of 227 destinations worldwide, leaving Japan as runner-up with a score of 193.
Several EU member states — France, Germany, Italy, and Spain — drop two places to 3rd position, and are joined by Finland and South Korea, which each lost a place over the past 12 months and now have access to 192 destinations visa-free.
A seven-nation EU cohort of Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden, all with visa-free access to 191 destinations, share 4th place, while Belgium, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, and the UK share 5th place with 190 visa-free destinations.
The rest of the index’s Top 10 is largely dominated by European countries, except for Australia (6th place with 189 destinations), Canada (7th place with 188 destinations), the US (9th place with 186 destinations), and the UAE, one of the biggest climbers over the past decade, having secured an additional 72 destinations since 2015 to put it in 10th place with visa-free access to 185 destinations worldwide.
Afghanistan remains firmly entrenched at the bottom of the index, having lost visa-free access to a further two destinations over the past year, creating the largest mobility gap in the index’s 19-year history, with Singaporeans able to travel to 169 more destinations visa-free than Afghan passport holders.
US and UK passports amongst the biggest fallers
Surprisingly, the US is the second-biggest faller between 2015 and 2025 after Venezuela, plummeting seven places from 2nd to its current 9th position.
Vanuatu is the third-biggest faller, followed by the British passport, which was top of the index in 2015 but now sits in 5th place. Completing the Top 5 losers list is Canada, which dropped three ranks over the past decade from 4th to its current 7th place.
In contrast, China is among the biggest climbers, ascending from 94th place in 2015 to 60th in 2025, with its visa-free score increasing by 40 destinations.
Annie Pforzheimer, Senior Associate at Washington thinktank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says “even before the advent of a second Trump presidency, American political trends had become notably inward-looking and isolationist. Ultimately, if tariffs and deportations are the Trump Administration’s default policy tools, not only will the US continue to decline on the mobility index on a comparative basis, but it will probably do so in absolute terms as well. This trend in tandem with China’s greater openness will likely give rise to Asia’s greater soft power dominance worldwide.”