Asian passports most powerful in the world: 2022 Henley Passport Index

Pre-covid passport rankings were dominated by European countries. But in a complete reversal, post the pandemic, it is Japan, Singapore and South Korea that are having the strongest passports in the world.

According to the latest Henley Passport Index by immigration consultancy Henley & Partners, a Japanese passport grants seamless access to 193 countries, one more than Singapore and South Korea.

Russian travel documents ranked 50th, and provide easy access to 119 countries. Giving access to 80 countries, China ranks 69th while the Indian passport has a rank of 87. Getting the holder access to just 27 countries, Afghanistan's passport is the least useful, according to Bloomberg.

"The recovery and reclamation of our travel freedoms, and our innate instinct to move and migrate, will take time," Henley & Partners Chairman Christian Kaelin said in a statement.

In 2017, Asian countries did not feature in the top 10 most accepted passports in the world. Europe's dominance gradually waned, with Germany now trailing South Korea. According to the latest ranking, UK and US has been ranked sixth and seventh respectively, given the holder access to 187 and 186 countries

Using 17 years of data, the index assists wealthy individuals and governments to evaluate the value of various citizenships around the globe on the basis of the passport offering the most abundant visa-free or visa-on-arrival access.

However, as global travel has yet to fully recover from Covid restrictions, the index offers only a notional snapshot of the best travel documents to hold as the world comes out of the pandemic's shadow.