Which countries have the most powerful passports?

Nov 9, 2015

Arwen Armbrecht

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

Our Impact

What's the World Economic Forum doing to accelerate action on Supply Chains and Transportation?

The Big Picture

Explore and monitor how Supply Chain and Transport is affecting economies, industries and global issues

Stay up to date:

Supply Chain and Transport

The answer: Britain and the United States. This is according to the Passport Index, which attributes points for every country a passport-holder can visit visa-free. The index examined 199 passports in total: 193 of them member countries of the United Nations and six of them territories. Both American and British citizens can visit a total of 147 of those countries without first obtaining a visa. The bottom of the ranking is taken up by Sao Tome and Principe, the Palestinian Territories, the Solomon Islands, Myanmar and South Sudan. Passport-holders from each of these places can visit only 28 countries visa-free.

Source: Good Magazine.

Have you read?
Is it time for a global passport?
Top 10 most tourism-ready economies
What is the future of work, travel and mobility?

Author: Donald Armbrecht is a freelance writer and social media manager.

Image: Passengers arrive at the passport control at the Cointrin airport in Geneva. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.