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By Hugh Cameron
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The potency of the U.S. passport has declined significantly from its recent highs, and the country has failed to crack the top 10 in a recent ranking of the world's most powerful passports.
According to the annual Global Passport Report from Global Citizen Solutions, a mobility firm specializing in residency and citizenship planning, the U.S. now ranks 12th in terms of overall strength—based on a composite assessment of mobility, investment attractiveness and the quality of life enjoyed by those living there.
It marks a slight improvement from 2025—when it was ranked 14th—and the firm noted that the U.S. passport remains “one of the most desirable" in the world.
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But the U.S. has fallen from first place in only five years, which the firm described as “the steepest five-year decline of any G7 country and one of the most significant trajectory reversals in the dataset for a major economy.”
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Why Is US Passport Strength Declining?
According to Global Citizen Solutions, the U.S. presents the report’s “most significant case study in structural decline.”
In 2021, the U.S. achieved the highest ever composite score of 96.45, which has now fallen to 92.37 in large part due to its failure to keep up in terms of “mobility.” The category—which accounts for 50 percent of the overall score—gauges the travel freedoms granted by a certain passport as well as whether that country is a “desirable” destination.
The U.S. mobility rank fell from 10th place in 2021 to 41st in 2026. And despite its citizens enjoying visa-free access to 110 countries, the U.S. remains the “10th most restrictive destination in the world,” with visa waiver programs covering only 43 of 197 nations.
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The “most visible catalyst” of the mobility decline, researchers said, was Brazil reinstating visa requirements for Americans last April, after the U.S. failed to reciprocate the country waiving them from 2019 onward.
China has also expanded visa-free entry to many nations—though not the United States—in recent years, they said, and the rollout of new European Union entry procedures have added “procedural friction that did not exist in 2021.”
"The American passport is a story of diverging metrics,” said Patricia Casaburi, CEO of Global Citizen Solutions. “On raw travel freedom it has fallen from 10th in the world in 2021 to 41st in 2026, a 31-place slide that reflects how aggressively other nations have expanded visa-free access while the U.S. has stood still, and in some cases lost ground, as countries such as Brazil reinstated visa requirements for American travelers.”
Which Countries Have Strongest Passports?
In 12th place, the U.S. is tied with France but behind many G7 peers.
The top 10, according to Tuesday’s report:
- Sweden
- Switzerland
- Finland
- Germany
- Denmark
- The Netherlands
- Ireland
- United Kingdom
- Singapore
- Norway
In separate rankings published by the British investment migration consultancy Henley & Partners, the U.S. passport currently sits in 10th place, tied with Iceland. That marks an improvement from its 2025 ranking of 12th—the first time in the index’s 20-year history that the U.S. placed outside the top 10.
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