If you possess a Singaporean passport, consider yourself fortunate. According to the latest Henley Passport Index, Singapore’s citizenship document currently holds the title of the most powerful in the world. This index reveals that Singaporeans can travel to a staggering 192 out of 227 destinations across the globe without the need for a visa.
In a surprising turn of events, Singapore has surpassed Japan, which had held the top spot on the index for the past five years. Japan now follows behind Germany, Italy, and Spain, all tied for second place with 190 visa-free travel destinations for their passport holders.
Japan now shares third place on the index with six other countries: Austria, France, Finland, Luxembourg, South Korea, and Sweden, all of which offer their citizens 189 destinations without a visa.
On the other hand, the United States has slipped down to eighth place on the index, in comparison to last year’s position. It is now tied with Lithuania, with access to 184 travel destinations without a visa. This decline in ranking reflects a downward trend for both the US and the United Kingdom since 2014 when they held the top positions.
Henley & Partners, a London-based global migration consultant group, reported that within the top 10 nations, the US has shown the smallest increase in visa-free travel destinations over the past decade, with only 12 more compared to ten years ago.
Greg Lindsay, a global strategist at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, notes that the US’s fall in the passport ranking indicates that it, along with other Western countries, is “falling behind.” Lindsay also suggests that this trend serves as a cautionary message for Canada and the rest of the Anglosphere.
The index also emphasizes the limited openness of the US, as it only offers visa-free access to 44 nationalities. Moreover, the study reveals that Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan possess the weakest passports in the world, granting access to only 30, 29, and 27 destinations, respectively.
While travel freedom has overall increased over the years, the gap between the top and bottom of the rankings has widened. Henley & Partners states that the global mobility gap is now at its widest, with Singapore, the top-ranked country, enjoying 165 more visa-free destinations than Afghanistan, the country with the least travel access.
The Henley Passport Index relies on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association, a prominent travel information database.
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