US drops out of world’s most powerful passport top 10 list for the first time

By Maureen O'Hare, CNN Photo: 123rf What makes a passport "powerful"? Well, a clear measure is travel openness, the ability to slip into destinations around the world with a breezy wave of your passport, no visa required. The Henley Passport Index is one of several rankings measuring passport potency in this regard and, for the first time in its 20-year history, the US passport has fallen out of its top 10 list altogether. Three Asian passports now command the top of the leaderboard: Singapore, with visa-free access to 193 destinations worldwide; South Korea, with access to 190; and Japan, with 189. New Zealand is in a tie with five other countries in sixth place. The United States, meanwhile, is down in 12th place in the latest quarterly ranking, tied with Malaysia. Citizens of both nations enjoy visa-free access to 180 of the 227 countries and territories tracked by the index, which was created by the London-based global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners, and uses exclusive data from the International Air Transport Association. And because Henley counts multiple countries with the same score as a single spot in its standings, there are actually 36 countries that outrank the US on the list. Photo: 123RF 'Declining strength' Back in 2014, the US held the No 1 spot, and in July this year it was still clinging onto the top 10. So what's behind this further descent? It's down to a series of access changes. In April, Brazil withdrew visa-free access for citizens from the US, Canada and Australia due to a lack of reciprocity. China has been introducing more welcoming policies, offering visa exemptions for dozens of mostly European countries, including Germany and France, but the US hasn't made the cut. Papua New Guinea and Myanmar have also tweaked their entry policies, which boosted other passports' rankings while further eroding that of the US. The final blow, the latest report from the index says, was Somalia's launch of a new eVisa system and Vietnam's exclusion of the US from its latest visa-free additions. "The declining strength of the US passport over the past decade is more than just a reshuffle in rankings - it signals a fundamental shift in global mobility and soft power dynamics," said Christian H Kaelin, chair of Henley & Partners, in a statement. "Nations that embrace openness and cooperation are surging ahead, while those resting on past privilege are being left behind." Photo: RNZ / Ziming Li China's sharp ascent The UK passport, which once held the top spot on the index in 2015, has also fallen to its lowest-ever position, dropping two places since July, from 6th to 8th. During this past decade of decline for the UK and the US, China has been making a sharp ascent on the rankings, climbing from 94th place in 2015 to 64th in 2025, gaining visa-free access to 37 more destinations in that time. The Henley Passport Index report points to China's recent moves - granting visa-free access to Russia, new agreements with the Gulf states, South America and several European countries - as examples of Beijing's ongoing strategy of increased openness. The UAE is another one of the biggest success stories on the index, having risen 34 places in the past decade, from No 42 to 8th place. At the opposite end of the list, at No 106, Afghanistan remains locked in bottom place, with visa-free access to just 24 destinations, two fewer than at the start of this year. Syria is at No 105 (with 26 destinations) and Iraq is at No 104 (with 29 destinations). That's a yawning mobility gap of 169 destinations between the top- and bottom-ranked passports. 'Still highly desirable' Commenting in July 2025 on the ailing performance of the US passport in the index, Richard Quest, CNN Business editor-at-large, noted how travel openness was being affected by the introduction of new restrictions such as ESTAs in the European Union and in the UK. "Can we make a linkage, if you will, to immigration policies of the Trump administration?" Quest said. "Yes, you probably can, at some level, say there is a direct relation between one and the other." Photo: wikipedia However, he added, the passports at the top of the leaderboard are still highly desirable with very few restrictions overall. "There are certainly citizenships that give greater access and availability to travel," said Quest, and there are wealthy individuals who seek to obtain them through investment schemes, such as the US$5 million (NZ$8.7m) "gold card" proposed by Trump in February. Henley & Partners advises its clients upon just these kind of residence and citizenship opportunities. "But for the average person, it's not a jot of difference," Quest said. "You've got your passport, you've got where you are. Learn and live with it." The Henley list is one of several indexes created by financial firms to rank global passports according to the access they provide to their citizens. Arton Capital's Passport Index takes...

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