We have launched our first edition of Best Passport Rankings for 2020, which ranks the best passport in the world based on our PBS scoring model. This model was developed in cooperation with Best Citizenships and World Citizenship Council (WCC)
Our study looks into visa restrictions on passports of 199 passports to 196 countries (territories excluded)
Our model even goes one step further, looks beyond visas, such as ability to combine dual passports and seeking consular protection during emergency abroad.
1. Visa free access with just a passport (1 point)
2. Soft visa categories (eVisa, ETA, Visa on arrival) (0.5 points)
3. Visa free access to BIG-6 countries (US, UK, EU schengen, Canada, Russia, China ) (5 points)
4. Use of combing dual passports to maximize visa free travel (5 points)
6. Consulate protection abroad for passport holders during emergency (5 points)
As a result of uniquely designed scoring model,
- Countries that are not open to dual citizenship do not perform very well in the rankings.
- Countries that enforce soft visa restrictions (eVisa/VOA/ETA) also score low in rankings. We have introduced soft and hard visa categories for the first time.
- Passports that have full visa free access given maximum points. That is ability to board the plane with just a passport without any visa required. We call this visa freedom!
We used freely and openly available visa information from Wikipedia. Â We extracted the wikipedia database using API, extracted and processed the data using python tools and libraries, and finally arriving at the numbers. The Data collection took significant time.
Our Findings
- Denmark and Finland are the world’s most powerful and strongest passports.
- Italy and Sweden have the second best passports in the world.
- Brunei is the only country in the world that has visa free access to all BIG-6 countries.
- Chilean passport moved up in rankings becoming a powerful passport in the Americas tied with Canada as it has visa freedom to visit BIG-5 countries except China.
- Norwegian passport jumped up to fourth place after the country fully allowed dual citizenship from Jan 2020.
- Afghanistan and Somalia are the weakest passports in the world.
- Seychelles and Mauritius have the best passports in Africa.
- Poland passport moved up in ranks after new visa waiver program (VWP) implemented with United States
- Greece and Portuguese passport tied at fourth place. Both countries offer popular golden visa schemes in Europe.
Best 10 Passports
These are the 10 best Passports in the world with Nordic countries taking the top spot.
The full study report is available here
