Which Is the World’s Most Powerful Passport for Visa-Free Travel in 2024? Not the American

For travelers 16 and older, a U.S. passport is good for ten years. But for those under 16, a passport's life is just five years. Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times/TNS

By Daniel Shoer Roth From Miami Herald

Passports open the doors of the world. But not all of them are equal. Depending on the country that issues them and various other factors, some are much more powerful than others.

And the advantages of being the holder of a powerful passport are countless. To begin with, they allow the holder to easily enter most countries without additional entry requirements such as visas.

So, which is the world’s most powerful passport for travel in 2024?

According to a well-known index published earlier this month, the Spanish passport is the best that a traveler can have today to travel next year.

Travelers with a Spanish passport can enter 43 countries passport free and 106 countries without visa requirements, making the passport of Spain the most powerful in the world for travelers, the VisaGuide.World Passport Index concluded.

The index not only takes into account the number of countries that can be visited without a visa, but also other benefits such as electronic travel authorization, visa issued upon arrival at the airport, electronic visa, passport-free travel and the value of the destination. These factors are used to compute a score by country.

The Spanish passport obtained a score of 90.36.

Countries With the Most Powerful Passports in the World

According to the VisaGuide scoreboard, the 10 passports that obtained the highest scores are, in this order:

• Spain
• Singapore
• Germany
• Italy
• France
• Netherlands
• Finland
• Sweden
• Norway
• Denmark

The index evaluates passports from 199 countries and territories and determines their strengths based on the variables.

The vast majority of countries with the most powerful passports belong to the European Union. Is the American passport no longer powerful?

The United States passport continues to fall in international rankings of the strongest passports.

According to the VisaGuide.Word index, the United States passport ranked 40th, with a score of 85.19.

Although U.S. passport holders can travel to 147 countries in the world without a visa requirement, “to enter the remaining countries, U.S. passport holders must apply for a visa beforehand,” according to the study.

Among the countries that require a visa for travelers with a U.S. passport are Cuba, Russia and Venezuela.

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