What are the Most Powerful Passports in the World?

What are the most powerful passports in the world? The latest 2020 Henley Passport Index ranking has been released on 7 January 2020.

Contents

Most Powerful Passports

What Makes a Passport Rank Highly?

Generous visa-free or visa-on-arrival access.
Number of destinations around the world that can be accessed by passport holders without a visa in advance.

191 is the number of territories accessible to the citizens of Japan, who hole the strongest passport in the world.

Selected Countries

All Countries

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Growing divide between countries providing visa-free/visa-on-arrival access versus those without.
Key migration factors include wealth migration, talent migration, climate migration, and forced migration.
Asia-Pacific countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, and Macao are known to be the freest countries in terms of international trade.
New Zealand and Singapore hold the top spots in terms of government integrity, followed by Northern European countries and the United Kingdom.
US-China trade war has accelerated the shift of Western investment out of China towards Asia especially Southeast Asia.
China, India, the Russian Federation, and Turkey saw the largest outflows of wealthy individuals during 2019, underpinned by
concerns about authoritarianism, safety, pollution, and economic insecurity.
Smaller nations are welcoming High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) in large numbers especially Cyprus, Greece, Malta, and Portugal which have EU membership, and Caribbean states such as Antigua & Barbuda and St. Kitts & Nevis.
An alarming trend is forced migration due to global displacement crisis with 41.3 million internally displaced people staying on average 17 years as a refugee.