Singapore’s passport overthrows Japan as the most powerful country in the world

If you hold a Singaporean passport, you are in luck.

The Southeast Asian country’s citizenship document officially ranks as the strongest in the world, according to the latest Henley Passport Indexwhich was published Tuesday.

According to the index, Singaporeans can travel to 192 of the 227 travel destinations in the world without a visa.

In a “major adjustment,” Singapore beat Japan, which has held the top spot on the index for the past five years.

Japan trailed Germany, Italy and Spain, all tied for second, with 190 visa-free travel destinations for their passport holders.

Japan is now in third place on the index with six other countries: Austria, France, Finland, Luxembourg, South Korea and Sweden with 189 visa-free destinations.

In comparison, the United States was a bit lower on the index, dropping from last year to eighth place, tied with Lithuania, with 184 visa-free travel destinations.

Both the US and the UK have been on a downward trend since 2014, when passports ranked first in the world.

Henley & Partners said that over the past decade, the United States has increased the number of destinations its citizens can travel to without a visa by 12. However, this represents the smallest increase of any country in the index’s top ten.

According to Henley & Partners, a global migration advisory group based in London, only eight countries have seen less visa access than they did a decade ago.

Greg Lindsey, a global strategist at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute, said America’s decline in the passport rankings is an indication that the United States and other Western countries are “being lagging behind.”

“America’s relentless decline in the rankings – and the improbability of reclaiming the top spot anytime soon – is a warning to its neighbor Canada and the rest of the Anglosphere as well,” Lindsey said in a statement.

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The United States also ranks low in “openness,” allowing only 44 other nationalities to visit without a visa.

The index found that the three most vulnerable passports in the world are Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, which can take you to 30, 29 and 27 destinations respectively.

While many travelers have seen more freedom in visa-free travel over the years, the gap between the top and bottom of the ratings has widened.

“The overall trend over the rating’s 18-year history has been towards more travel freedom, with the average number of destinations travelers can access visa-free nearly doubling from 58 in 2006 to 109 in 2023,” said Henley & Partners. “However, the global mobility gap between those at the top and bottom of the index is now wider than ever, with top-ranked Singapore having access to 165 visa-free destinations compared to Afghanistan.”

The index is based on exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association, a major database of travel information.

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