Top Five Countries That Hold World's Most Powerful Passport (image@pixabay)

For the past five years, only Singapore and Japan boasted about issuing world’s most powerful passports, allowing their citizens to fly to several countries without a prior visa. However, things take a different turn this year. According to 2024 Hanley Passport Index, which release report by utilizing official data from International Air Transportation Association (IATA), and revealed a breaking record with six countries sharing the top spot of owning the most powerful passport.

France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Singapore offer their citizens access to 194 countries out of the total 227 countries without visa. The new change marks a significant change in increasing the travel freedom with the average number of destination accessible without visa nearly doubling from 58 in 2006 to 111 in 2024.

The five countries are closely followed by South Korea, Finland and Sweden by allowing their citizens visa-free travel to 193 destinations. Four European countries, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherland ranks third by allowing their citizens to fly towards 192 nations without visa. When UK has raised to fourth position, US remains at seven. In 2014, both US and UK were at seventh position in the ranking. Washington and London are far below from their position a decade ago.

Remarkably, United Arab Emirates (UAE) has jumped from 44^th position to 11^th position with 183 destinations, in the past decade. In the 2014 ranking, UAE was at 55^th position with 106 visa-free destination. China and Ukraine also made significant progress in their rankings. Ukraine holds the 32^nd position 148 visa-free destinations. China is at 62^nd position with visa-free access to 85 countries. Meanwhile, Russia remains static since 2017 and is at the 51^st position. India is at 80^th position in the ranking, with visa-free access to 62 destinations.