In 2025, South Africa powered up the Henley Passport Index passport ranking, improving to 48th position from 53 in 2024, yet it is still off of its best ranking in 2008 and 2009 when it was ranked at 35.
The South African passport allows citizens to travel visa-free to 106 destinations. Mauritius, which ranks 29th, holds the title of best ranking of an African country. It offers 151 travel visa-free destinations.
Undisputed passport leaders are Singapore and Japan, which broke away from the six countries that shared the top spot last year to secure gold and silver on the 2025 Henley Passport Index.
The index ranks the world’s 199 passports according to the number of destinations they can access visa-free and is based on exclusive Timatic data from the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
Singapore reclaims its crown as the most powerful passport in the world with visa-free access to 195 out of 227 destinations worldwide, leaving Japan in the runner-up spot with a score of 193 but still ahead of the rest after it regained visa-free access to neighbouring China for the first time since the Covid lockdowns.
Dr 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,” Kaelin says.
The rest of the index’s Top 10 is dominated mainly 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 ever to make it into the upper echelons of the rankings.
US and UK passports are among the biggest fallers
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, 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 is 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. Regarding 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.
Dr Tim Klatte, a Partner in Grant Thornton China and an adjunct professor at Shanghai New York University and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, explains that the upcoming second inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump will mark a turning point in US-China economic relations and, by extension, for the world economy.
“The Trump-era trade wars will not only be viewed as bilateral disputes — they will serve as transformative events for the global economy. Disrupting trade flows, raising costs, and sowing uncertainty will require businesses, governments, and international institutions to adapt to a new reality.
“This strategy raises serious concerns about the fragmentation of the global economy and the potential for increased geopolitical tensions. Trump has not been shy about his foreign policy strategies, from Canada to China, and his direct approach will continue to present doubts in the confidence of the USA’s passport power moving forward.”
In 2025, projections by Henley & Partners and New World Wealth indicate an even more significant surge in millionaire migration worldwide, with 142,000 high-net-worth individuals with liquid investable wealth of USD 1 million or more expected to relocate and seek new horizons.
Dr Steffen says: “This represents the most significant wealth migration wave ever documented and reflects fundamental changes in how affluent individuals are mitigating risks and creating opportunities in an increasingly unstable and polarised world”.
Visa racism: Africans twice as likely to be rejected for Schengen visas
In exclusive new research conducted for Henley & Partners and published in the Henley Global Mobility Report 2025 Q1, Prof Mehari Taddele Maru at the European University Institute and of Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies compared Schengen visa rejection rates for African applicants to those from other regions.
“My latest research compares the 10 countries facing the highest Schengen visa rejection rates and reveals that while globally only one in six applications is rejected, one in two African applicants is rejected. In 2023, African countries accounted for just 2.8% of global applications out of over 10 million worldwide, yet half of their applications were rejected.
“Even more concerning is that this trend has worsened over the past decade, with rejection rates more than doubling during this period.”
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 most significant mobility gap in the index’s 19-year history, with Singaporeans able to travel to 169 more destinations visa-free than Afghan passport holders.
Read the full Henley Global Mobility Report 2025 Q1 online here.
