The annual Henley & Partners Passport Index has named the German passport the third-best for visa-free travel in the world in 2025, after it claimed the top spot in 2024.
Every January, law firm Henley & Partners puts together an international passport index, which the firm claims to be the “original and most authoritative” ranking of its kind.
In 2025, the company ranked 199 passports by how useful they are for international travel, which is determined by whether they grant users visa-free access to 227 different travel destinations.
Passports are awarded one point for every country holders can travel to without requiring a visa, or if the traveller can obtain a visa, a visitor's permit, or an electronic travel authority (ETA) upon arriving at their destination.
No points are awarded for places where the holder needs a pre-arranged visa - one that cannot be claimed at airports, other ports of entry or border checkpoints - or where each entrant requires a pre-departure authorisation from the government.
While the annual index is published in January, it is also updated quarterly. In its first instalment of the 2025 ranking, Henley & Partners named the Singaporean passport the most powerful in the world for visa-free travel, followed by the Japanese passport. Singaporean nationals can currently travel to 195 countries without a visa, and Japanese citizens can travel to 193.
Falling from first place in the 2024 ranking, Henley & Partners named the German passport the third-best for bureaucracy-light travel in 2025. The German passport jointly shared its third-place title with the Finnish, French, Italian, Spanish and South Korean passports.
Since the ranking was started in 2006, the status of the German passport - at least according to Henley & Partners - has been jumping around between third, second and third place. This is with one exception when the passport dropped down to fifth-best for visa-free travel in 2011.
According to the law firm, in 2025 German passport holders can travel to 192 countries visa-free. This will be welcome news to the long-term residents in Germany working towards naturalisation.
Even before Germany’s now-defunct traffic-light coalition passed its dual citizenship law in June 2024, the country was seeing an uptick in naturalisations. In 2023 Germany saw the highest number of naturalisations in 23 years and these figures are only expected to increase now that international residents are not forced to surrender their original citizenship in exchange for a German passport, but can keep both.
In all, here are the best passports for visa-free travel in 2025, according to Henley & Partners:
For more information, and to see how other passports ranked, check out the Henley & Partners website.
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