If you plan to travel the world you’re going to need a passport, but sadly not all passports are created equal.

The passports of various countries have different power levels, and in the most current standings from the Henley Passport Index tell us that the passport of Singapore takes the top spot as it can get you into 195 countries without a visa.

It first hit the top spot in 2019 and has sat at the top of the passport power tree for five of the last seven years.

Meanwhile, down at the bottom in 106th place is Afghanistan, with visa-free access to just 26 countries.

As for us Brits, a decade ago the UK possessed the world’s most powerful passport, but now we don’t and are currently occupying fifth place alongside several other countries.

What makes a passport powerful?

The rankings are based on which countries a person can travel to visa-free with their passport.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you can waltz into the airport, flash your passport and walk through without further checks, however.

If a Brit wanted to visit the US, they’d want to make sure they’d sorted out an Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) before arriving, and according to the US website, this takes on average 23 minutes to do.

Meanwhile, if you wanted to visit somewhere like The Maldives, you’d need a visa but you can apply for one upon arrival in the country and don’t need to sort it out before you depart.

Basically, in the Henley Passport index, a passport gets a point for every country a person holding that passport can enter without having to secure a visa before travelling.

Travelling to countries where you need an ETA or a visa on arrival still gives a passport a point in the index, while the passport doesn’t gain one if you need to get a visa before you start your journey.

The US passport is tied with Estonia in ninth place (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

How’s the UK passport doing?

The UK passport is joint-fifth place along with Belgium, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland as there are 190 nations Brits can travel to visa-free.

Joint-fifth isn’t bad going, though from 2013 through to 2015, Brits had the most powerful passport in the world.

We hit the top spot in 2010 before dropping to third for the next couple of years, then the UK fell back to third in 2016 and slid further down the rankings each subsequent year until hitting seventh place in 2020, we’ve since climbed back up a bit to fifth.

Back in 2020, the UK and US passports were on par granting visa-free access into 185 countries, fast forward the clock a couple of years and that figure jumps to 186 for the United States and 187 for the UK.

The British passport pulled further ahead with access to 189 countries in 2023, and then climbed to 190 last year, while the US has stayed on 186, with our visa-free access to Belarus, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Vietnam is coming in clutch.

We’ve got the same score as last year, but in 2024, that was enough for joint fourth place so even though we’ve slipped a place our passport hasn’t become weaker.

The reason why our passport has slipped a place is because Japan added another point and went from being tied in second place with France, Spain, Italy and Germany to taking the second spot for itself, meaning everyone else had to shift down.

New travel restrictions coming into place mean the UK passport may be about to get a lot weaker. (Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

What about Brexit?

While you might expect Brexit to have had a serious effect on the ranking, the UK has gone from a score of 175 in 2016 to 190 now, but since the index is for counting whether or not you can get into the country, it’s not had a major impact.

What Brexit has affected is how long a Brit can stay in an EU country, as now we can only stay for up to 90 days in a given 180 day period without a visa.

Since Brits can still get into EU countries without a visa it hasn’t knocked down our passport’s score, but the index isn’t equipped to measure how much more difficult staying in an EU country beyond the short-term has become for those with a UK passport.

However, new travel rules coming into force this year means that to travel to any of the 29 countries in the Schengen area you’ll need a European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) or you’ll be refused entry.

While an ETIAS may take just a few minutes to obtain, there are warnings that it could take several days if you are required to provide extra documents so getting one after you’ve left but before you arrive isn’t very safe.

If the ETIAS counts enough to knock 29 points off the strength of the British passport in the index then we’d drop down from joint-fifth to sharing 22nd place with the Bahamas.