Yahoo Finance Revealed: World's most powerful passports in 2022
If you have a Singaporean or a Japanese passport, then you're in possession of the world's most powerful passports in 2022.
The Henley Passport Index has ranked all the world’s passports for the first quarter of 2022 according to the number of destinations their holders can access without a visa.
The results reveal record-breaking levels of travel freedom for strong passport holders.
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The index includes 199 passports and 227 travel destinations and the ranking is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which maintains the world’s most extensive and accurate database of travel information.
Up one spot from 2021, the Australian passport has been ranked the 7th most powerful, with access to 185 destinations without a prior visa.
Countries with the most powerful passports
1. Japan, Singapore: 192 destinations
2. Germany, South Korea: (190)
3. Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, Spain: (189)
4. Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Sweden: (188)
5. Ireland, Portugal: (187)
6. Belgium, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States: (186)
7. Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Greece, Malta: (185)
8. Poland, Hungary: (183)
9. Lithuania, Slovakia: (182)
10. Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia: (181)
The flip side
The Index also showed the widest-recorded global mobility gap in its 17-year history, which can be attributed to the continued spread of the pandemic with every mutation of the COVID-19 virus.
Other findings revealed that high-net-worth investors and entrepreneurs were increasingly looking to create portfolios of complementary citizenship and residence options through investment migration programs to access health security and optionality in terms of where they and their families can comfortably live, conduct business, study and invest, against a backdrop of ongoing global uncertainty.
Countries with the weakest passports
102. Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Sudan: 41 destinations
103. Bangladesh, Kosovo, Libya (40)
104. North Korea (39)
105. Nepal and Palestinian territories (37)
106. Somalia (34)
107. Yemen (33)
108. Pakistan (31)
109. Syria (29)
110. Iraq (28)
111. Afghanistan (26)
Methodology
The Henley Passport Index is a reliable resource for global citizens and the standard reference tool for government policy on the latest shifts in passport power.
Each passport is scored on the total number of destinations the holder can access visa-free. For each travel destination, if no visa is required, then a score of 1 is allocated for that passport.
This also applies if passport holders can obtain a visa on arrival, a visitor’s permit, or an electronic travel authority (ETA) upon entry into another country.
Where a visa is needed, or where a passport holder must apply for a government-approved electronic visa (e-Visa) before departure, a score of 0 is given. The same applies if they need pre-departure approval for a visa on arrival.
