Some passports in the world have a reputation for how powerful one is. A powerful passport means that any person with that passport can travel outside of their country to visit many. For example, let’s say you want to visit the United Kingdom as an United States citizen. Apparently you can travel without visa to the United Kingdom and all you have to worry about is the plane fare and if your passport is up to date. Having a powerful passport makes it so easy to travel since you can visit many countries with ease. Let’s talk about what makes a passport powerful and the list of powerful passports in the world.
What makes a passport powerful?
Some people may think it’s the history, culture and the language of the country that makes it suitable for visa-less travel which is absolutely correct. There are many more factors that determine a powerful passport. A simple answer is how many countries you can travel to using that passport, visa free.
Henley Global ranks all passports in the world in terms of powerfulness, simply for every destination a passport holder can go, visa free, they get one point on the ranking. The history of countries can be a good factor determining whether their passports are powerful or not.
For example, if we look at the United Kingdom and The United States; these countries have good relations between each other therefore you can travel with either a US or a UK passports to these countries. Compared to countries in Africa, they have low rates of visa free access due to cultural or possibly racial biases. GDP (gross domestic product) can also play a part in visa free access. Think about it, you would want people from rich countries to travel to your country for tourism and good GDP can also mean good relations with other countries.
Here’s a list of the 10 most powerful passports in the world and lets see if we can recognize the pattern
- Singapore
- Japan
- South Korea
- Denmark
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Ireland
- Italy
- Spain
Source: Henley & Partners
Surprisingly the United States is not in the top 10 list of powerful passports even though they have the highest GDP in the world, therefore we will conclude that relations with other countries is the most important factor for a country to have a powerful passport.
