What makes a passport powerful?

Great information for leaders who will love to change things for the better for their citizens. The top two are Income and Fragility.

1. Income: a country’s economic power. According to Henley & Partners, countries with high gross domestic product per capita (GDP) enjoy more visa-free destinations than countries with lower economic power.
2. Fragility: anything that can impair the nation’s economic and social status. For instance, human flight and brain drain; state legitimacy, the level of domestic instability like bombings, terrorist attacks, ethnic conflict, and organized crime; the history of civil war, social tensions, elite factionalization, the size of an internally displaced population, external intervention and so on)

Then sometimes,

3. Health-related issues
4. Tensions between countries (like you have between Ukraine and Russia). These tensions can arise due to political relations or international disagreements

All these increase the risk of people seeking asylum or overstay their visa which is considered security breach to some extent.

So, countries whose people are statistically more prone to pose high-risk for overstay, asylum, and participation in illegal activities often have a lower rank. There are a few outliers here and there. Check out Henley’s Global website for more details on the contributing factors.

Benefits of having strong passport include

1. Spontaneous adventures
2. Save on visa application fees
3. Experience the life of a digital nomad

Read more for how to travel with your current passport here.

Here’s the list of most powerful and least powerful passports in the world based on Q1 2023 global ranking and their visa free score. Visa free score means countries they can travel to visa-free or visa on arrival or eTA. If you are Nigerian, check out this post for all the countries you can travel to visa free.

Top 10 most powerful passports in the world

1. Singapore (193 destinations)
2. Germany, Spain, Finland, France, Japan, South Korea, Sweden & Italy (190 destinations)
3. Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, United Kingdom & Luxembourg (189 destinations)
4. Belgium, Malta, Norway & Portugal (188 destinations)
5. Czech Republic, New Zealand, Switzerland & Poland (187 destinations)
6. Australia, Hungary, Canada & Greece (186 destinations)
7. Lithuania & United States (185 destinations)
8. Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia (184 destinations)
9. Estonia (18 destinations)
10. Iceland (182 destinations)

Top 10 least powerful passports in the world

1. Afghanistan (27 countries out of 227 destinations in the world)
2. Iraq (29 destinations)
3. Syria (30 destinations)
4. Pakistan (33 destinations)
5. Yemen & Somalia (35 destinations)
6. Palestinian territory (38 destinations)
7. Nepal (39 destinations)
8. Bangladesh & North Korea (40 destinations)
9. Libya & Sri Lanka (41 destinations)
10. Kosovo (42 destinations)