The visa-free score: ranking 199 passports for 2026

Every January we recompute the Orizn visa-free score: for each of the 199 passports on record, the number of destinations to which the holder can travel without applying for a visa before departure. That count includes visa-free entries, visa-on-arrival, electronic travel authorizations like ETA and ESTA (which travelers can self-issue online), and short-stay categories whose only friction is filling out a form at the airport.

It excludes anything that requires a consular interview, a fee paid before boarding, or a multi-week processing window. The intuition: a score of 180 means an average traveler with that passport can be on a flight tomorrow to 180 different countries without paperwork that would have stopped them.

Methodology

We score every passport against every other country in our database — 199 by 199 minus the trivial self-pair. For each pair we look at six fields: process type (visa-free, VOA, eTA, e-visa, embassy), maximum stay (any positive number counts), eligibility (no residency requirement), and three conditional gates (yellow fever, onward ticket, accommodation proof). A pair scores if process type is visa-free, VOA or eTA, and all gates can be met by a typical leisure traveler.

We do not weight by destination popularity. A point for the United States and a point for Tuvalu count the same. Several other rankings weight by tourism volume or by economic size. Ours does not — the question we want to answer is "how many doors does this passport open", not "how desirable is what is behind them".

The top 20

As of January 2026, the top of the table is unchanged at the top but has shifted noticeably in the middle. The top five passports access 191 or more destinations without prior visa. The top twenty all access 180 or more.

1. Singapore — 195 destinations
2. Japan — 194
3. South Korea — 194
4. Germany — 193
5. Italy — 193
6. Spain — 192
7. Finland — 192
8. France — 192
9. Luxembourg — 191
10. Austria — 191
11. Netherlands — 191
12. Sweden — 190
13. Switzerland — 190
14. Ireland — 189
15. United Kingdom — 189
16. Belgium — 189
17. Denmark — 188
18. Norway — 188
19. Portugal — 188
20. United States — 187

Singapore retains the top spot for the fifth year running, helped by reciprocal visa-free agreements signed with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar in late 2024, plus Vietnam's expansion of its visa-free list in 2025. Japan and South Korea are essentially tied — Japan edges ahead because of a single bilateral with Suriname that South Korea has not yet matched.

Biggest movers since 2025

The biggest year-over-year gains come from two clusters: Gulf states expanding their bilateral agreements, and ASEAN passports benefiting from Southeast Asian regional liberalization.

• UAE: +9 destinations (181 → 190). Cabinet-level diplomatic push throughout 2025.
• Saudi Arabia: +7 destinations (84 → 91). New agreements with several Schengen countries.
• Vietnam: +6 (54 → 60). Reciprocal Schengen expansion and Gulf agreements.
• Indonesia: +5 (74 → 79). ASEAN-Gulf reciprocity package.
• Brazil: +4 (172 → 176). Mostly recovered from the 2023 reciprocity reset with the United States.

The biggest losses are smaller in magnitude but politically loaded.

• Russia: -11 destinations (108 → 97). Continued post-2022 retrenchment.
• Iran: -3 (45 → 42). Mostly Latin American downgrades.
• Myanmar: -2 (47 → 45). Domestic-conflict-related reciprocity withdrawals.

The regional picture

Averaged by region, the scores form a familiar shape but with one surprise. Western Europe averages 189. East Asia (developed) averages 188. North America averages 184. The Gulf has jumped to 142, ahead of Eastern Europe at 134 and Latin America at 131. Sub-Saharan Africa averages 64 — essentially unchanged in a decade. South Asia averages 58. Central Asia, 65.

The surprise this year is the Gulf overtaking Eastern Europe. Three years ago that would have been unthinkable. It is the clearest single signal in the dataset of where geopolitical alignment is producing concrete mobility consequences.

What the data says about 2026

Three things are visible in the 2026 numbers that were not visible in 2024. First, the Gulf is now the fastest-rising bloc by passport power, and the trend is structural — bilateral agreements signed in 2024 and 2025 will be implemented through 2026. Second, ASEAN integration is creeping forward; the regional bloc as a whole gained about two points per passport on average. Third, the gap between the top quartile and the bottom quartile — between, say, Singapore and Afghanistan — is at its widest since we started measuring. The world is not flattening. Mobility is consolidating at the top and stagnating at the bottom.

Download the dataset

The full 199-row dataset, every cell scored with sourceUrl and verifiedAt timestamps, is available at visa.orizn.app/ranking-2026 as JSON and CSV. The license is CC-BY 4.0 — use it freely, including for commercial work, as long as you credit Orizn. If you build something on top of it, send us a link. We love seeing the dataset out in the wild.