The Passport Index, an interactive passport ranking tool compared the access granted by the passports of 163 countries that are members of United Nations. The result says that New Zealand is the topmost ranked passport in the world.
The Passport Index is a real-time global ranking of world’s passports. The rankings get frequently updated according to the changes in policies related to the passport of each country. A 3-tier method is used to rank each passport.
The factors that influence the ranking includes:
- Electronic travel authorization
- Visa requirements
- World openness score
- Mobility score
New Zealand offers visa-free travel or visa-on-arrival to 129 countries. This is remarkable considering that COVID-19 that has restricted visa-free travel for many countries.
In the second place offering visa-free travel to 128 nations are Australia, South Korea, Ireland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Austria, and Germany. In the third place with 127 countries granted visa-free travel are Spain, Italy, Finland, France, Belgium, and Sweden.
Here’s a list of the world’s top 10 most powerful passports in 2020, with travel restrictions due to COVID-19 according to Passport Index:
- New Zealand (129 destinations)
- Australia, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland, Japan, Ireland, South Korea (128 destinations)
- Belgium, Sweden, France, Italy, Finland, Spain (127 destinations)
- Denmark, Netherlands, Portugal, Norway, Lithuania, Iceland, Canada, the UK (126 destinations)
- Slovenia, Malta, Latvia (125 destinations)
- Estonia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Liechtenstein (124 destinations)
- Slovakia (123 destinations)
- Croatia, Cyprus, Monaco (121 destinations)
- Bulgaria, Romania (120 destinations)
- San Marino, Uruguay, Andorra (115 destinations)
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