Nigerian passport
A new report has shown that the Nigerian passport was ranked as one of the 18 least powerful in 2025.
Data from the Henley Passport Index, which ranks all the world’s passports, according to the number of destinations they can access visa-free, and is based on exclusive official data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) shows that the Nigerian passport ranks among the bottom 18 for 2025, a trend that has persisted for several years.
Nigeria is ranked 183 out of 200 countries on the list of countries with the most powerful passports in the world.
Singapore and Japan broke away from the six countries that shared the top spot last year to secure gold and silver, respectively.
Singapore reclaims its crown as the most powerful passport in the world, with visa-free access to 195 out of 227 destinations worldwide. Japan is in the runner-up spot with a score of 193, but it is still ahead of the rest after it regained visa-free access to neighbouring China for the first time since the COVID lockdowns.
Several EU member states — France, Germany, Italy, and Spain — drop two places in the ranking to 3rd position, and are joined by Finland and South Korea, which each lost a place over the past 12 months and now have access to 192 destinations with no prior visa required.
A seven-nation EU cohort, all with visa-free access to 191 destinations — Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden — share 4th place, while five countries — Belgium, New Zealand, Portugal, Switzerland, and the UK — come in 5th with 190 visa-free destinations.
On the other end of the mobility spectrum, Afghanistan, unsurprisingly, remains firmly entrenched at the bottom of the Henley Passport Index, having lost visa-free access to a further two destinations over the past year, creating the largest mobility gap in the index’s 19-year history, with Singaporeans able to travel to 169 more destinations visa-free than Afghan passport holders.
Christian Kaelin, Chairman of international investment migration advisory firm Henley & Partners and the inventor of the passport index concept, says The very notion of citizenship and its birthright lottery needs a fundamental rethink as temperatures rise, natural disasters become more frequent and severe, displacing communities and rendering their environments uninhabitable. Simultaneously, political instability and armed conflicts in various regions force countless people to flee their homes in search of safety and refuge.
The need to introduce Free Global Cities to harness the untapped potential of displaced people and other migrants, transforming them from victims of circumstance into architects of their futures has never been more pressing or apparent”.
The rest of the index’s Top 10 is largely dominated by European countries, except for Australia (6th place with 189 destinations), Canada (7th place with 188 destinations), the US (9th place with 186 destinations), and the UAE, the first and only Arab state to ever make it into the upper echelons of the rankings.
The UAE has been one of the biggest climbers on the index over the past decade, having secured access to an additional 72 destinations since 2015, enabling it to climb 32 places to the 10th spot with visa-free access to 185 destinations worldwide.
Only 22 of the world’s 199 passports have fallen down the Henley Passport Index ranking over the past decade. Surprisingly, the US is the second-biggest faller between 2015 and 2025 after Venezuela, plummeting seven places from 2nd to its current 9th position.
Vanuatu is the third-biggest faller, losing six places from 48th to 54th position, followed by the British passport, which was top of the index in 2015 but now sits in 5th place. Completing the Top 5 losers list is Canada, which dropped three ranks over the past decade from 4th to its current 7th place.
In contrast, China has been among the biggest climbers over the past decade, ascending from 94th place in 2015 to 60th in 2025, with its visa-free score increasing by 40 destinations in that time. In terms of its openness to other nations, China has also risen on the Henley Openness Index, which ranks all 199 countries and territories worldwide according to the number of nationalities they permit entry to without a prior visa.
China granted visa-free access to a further 29 countries over the past year alone, and now sits in 80th position, granting visa-free entry to a total of 58 nations as the new year commences, compared to its rival America, which ranks 84th and allows just 46 other countries access without a prior visa.
Commenting in the Henley Global Mobility Report 2025 Q1, released today alongside the latest Henley Passport Index, Annie Pforzheimer, Senior Associate at Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the continued comparative decline of the US in terms of global mobility is no surprise.
“Even before the advent of a second Trump presidency, American political trends had become notably inward-looking and isolationist. Even though US economic health relies heavily on immigration, tourism, and trade, voters during the 2024 presidential campaign were fed a narrative that America can (and should) stand alone.
Ultimately, if tariffs and deportations are the Trump administration’s default policy tools, not only will the US continue to decline on the mobility index on a comparative basis, but it will probably do so in absolute terms as well. This trend in tandem with China’s greater openness will likely give rise to Asia’s greater soft power dominance worldwide.”
