According to the index, a Japanese passport provides hassle-free entry into 193 countries.
Japan, Singapore and South Korea have the most powerful passports as the world continues to recover from Covid-19, reversing the pre-pandemic rankings that dominated European countries.
According to the latest Henley Passport Index from Henley & Partners, an immigration consultancy, a Japanese passport provides hassle-free entry to 193 countries, one more than the countries of Singapore and South Korea.
Russian travel documents are ranked 50th, providing easy access to 119 countries. China is ranked 69th with access to 80 countries, India’s passport is ranked 87th and Afghanistan’s passport is the least useful, getting the holder to only 27 countries.
“The recovery and improvement of our travel freedom, and our innate tendency to move and migrate, will take time,” said Henley & Partners chairman Christian Keelin in a statement.
According to the index, as recently as 2017, Asian countries barely showed one of the world’s 10 most accepted passports. Europe’s dominance has gradually waned and Germany is now behind South Korea. The latest rankings show that the UK ranks sixth with a reach of 187 countries, while the US is at the seventh position with a score of 186.
The index, which uses 17 years of data, helps wealthy individuals and governments assess the value of citizenship around the world, based on which passports provide the most profuse visa-free, or visa-on-arrival access. We do. Yet, with global travel yet to fully recover from the COVID restrictions, the index best documents only a hypothetical snapshot of how the world emerges from the pandemic.
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