Estonia has the 12th most powerful passport in the world
The Estonian passport is the 12th most powerful in the world, providing visa-free access to 181 countries and territories, according to the 2022 Henley Passport Index.
In 2022, Estonia was in tenth place, but the number of countries and territories remained the same. Last year, Estonia shared the city with Latvia and Slovenia; however, in the 2023 index, Latvia and Slovenia are ranked 11th with visa-free access to 182 countries.
The most powerful passport in the world is Japanese (193 countries), followed by Singapore and South Korea (192), Germany and Spain (190), Finland, Italy and Luxembourg (189) and Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden (188).
However, the number of countries to which any passport allows visa-free access is somewhat inflated, as Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa and Guam are listed as separate countries – even though they are territories of the United States and their entry requirements are the same as in the rest of the US.
In the 2023 index, Lithuania is in 10th place (183 countries), and Russia is in 49th place (118).
The worst passports in the world are those of Afghanistan (109th, 27 countries), Iraq (108th, 29th) and Syria (107th, 30th).
The indexproduced annually by London-based global citizenship and residency consultancy Henley & Partners, it is based on data provided by the International Air Transport Association – known as IATA – and has been collected by the firm since 2006.