The Henley Passport Index is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom for their citizens. It started in 2006 as Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index and was modified and renamed in January 2018. The site provides a ranking of the 199 passports of the world according to the number of countries their holders can travel to visa-free. The number of countries that a specific passport can access becomes its visa-free 'score'. In collaboration with the International Air Transport Association, and based on official data from their global database Henley & Partners has analysed the visa regulations of all the countries and territories in the world since 2006.
2020 Henley Passport Index
Definition of the Index
The HPI consists of a ranking of passports according to how many other territories can be reached 'visa-free'. All distinct destination countries and territories in the IATA database are considered. However, since not all territories issue passports, there are far fewer passports to be ranked than destinations against which queries are made.
Methodology
To determine the score for each country or territory, the IATA database is queried in the following way: 1. Each of the 199 passports for which the score is to be determined, is checked against every one of the 227 possible travel destinations for which travel restriction information exists in the IATA database. These interrogations continue throughout the year so scores will continuously change. 2. Each query is made with the following conditions:
passports are issued in the country of nationality
passport holders are an adult citizen of the country which issued the passport and a lone traveller rather than in a tourist group
queries are made only for holders of normal passports rather than diplomatic, service, emergency, or temporary passports and other travel documents are disregarded
passport holders do not meet any complex requirements for entry
passport holders have all necessary vaccinations and certificates;
passport holders are arriving at and departing from the same airport
passport holders are seeking a short stay rather than a transit
requirements by the destination country or territory regarding a particular length of validity of passports are disregarded
passport holders meet all basic requirements for entry
advance passenger information and advance approval to board are not considered to be a visa requirement or travel restriction, neither is the requirement to pay airport tax
It is assumed that the visa policies of Greenland and the Faroe Islands are identical to Denmark. 4. If no visa is required for passport holders from a particular country or territory to enter the destination, then that passport scores 1. 5. Where visas are needed, or where passport holders have to get government-approved electronic visas before departure, a score of 0 is given. If passport holders must get government approval before leaving in order to obtain a visa on arrival, this also scores 0. 6. The total score for a particular passport is then assigned according to the conditions defined above.
April 2020 results
As of 2020, a Japanese passport offers its holders visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to a total of 191 countries, a Singapore passport offers its holders 190 countries, and South Korean passport and German passports each offer 189 visa-free or visa-on-arrival countries to their holders. An Afghan passport has once again been labelled by the index as the least powerful passport in the world, with its nationals only able to visit 26 destinations visa-free.
