The passports of Australia, Greece and Cyprus are now even more powerful worldwide, according to the latest Henley Passport Index.
The Index has been compiled for 18 years and is based on the number of destinations that their passport holders can access without a prior visa.
The ranking is constructed off data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and is powered by the research team at Henley & Partners, a London-based immigration and investment advisory firm.
At the start of 2023, the Australian passport was in eighth place, allowing travel to 185 destinations out of 227 around the world, but is now up to sixth with 186 destinations (after including Suriname) where you can travel without a visa, or where they’re able to obtain a visa, visitor’s permit, or an electronic travel authority (ETA) upon arrival, SBS pointed out.
Greece’s position also improved from eighth to seventh, though there was no increase to the number of destinations which remained at 185.
Cyprus rose four places to 12th and moved from 177 destinations to 179.
Notably, Japan was knocked down after five years in top place, being toppled by Singapore whose passport holders can now visit 192 destinations around the world without a visa.
Germany, Italy and Spain occupy second place with access to 190, while Japan now sits in third, together with Australia, Finland, France, Luxembourg, South Korea and Sweden (all with 189).
The United Kingdom rose to fourth (after six years of declining) and is now level with Denmark, Ireland and the Netherlands with 188.
Belgium, Czech Republic, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland are in fifth with 187, while Australia is level with Hungary and Poland in sixth (186).
Greece is alongside Canada in seventh (185), with Lithuania and the USA (eighth, 184), Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia (ninth, 183) and Estonia and Iceland (tenth, 180) closing out the top ten.
It is worth noting that the UK and the United States have been on a downward trajectory ever since jointly occupying first place in 2014.
Afghanistan remains In last place on the ranking (103rd) with access only to 27 destinations, with Iraq (29) and Syria (30) slightly above them.
While the average number of destinations that travellers can access visa-free has nearly doubled from 58 in 2006 to 109 in 2023, the gap between the top and bottom is wider than ever before.
Henley & Partners has also published a new index called the Henley Openness Index, which looks into the relationship between a country’s openness to foreigners and its own citizens’ travel freedom.
The top 20 “most open” countries on this Index are all small island nations or African states, with the exception of Cambodia.
There are 12 completely open countries that offer visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to all 198 other passports in the world which are: Burundi, Comoro Islands, Djibouti, Guinea-Bissau, Maldives, Micronesia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Samoa, Seychelles, Timor-Leste, and Tuvalu.
