BRENT PIN­HEIRO

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

If you're a T&T pass­port hold­er plan­ning to take a trip this year, you may need to add "ap­ply for a visa" to your to-do list.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Hen­ley Pass­port In­dex up­date, the Trinidad & To­ba­go pass­port now on­ly al­lows visa-free ac­cess to 146 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries across the globe. In 2025, that num­ber was 152.

Over­all, T&T's pass­port re­mains ranked 28th on the list but be­cause mul­ti­ple coun­tries can oc­cu­py a sin­gle spot in the stand­ings, there are ac­tu­al­ly 63 coun­tries that out­rank T&T.

This re­duced ac­cess to the globe has al­so im­pact­ed our rank­ing among Caribbean pass­ports, with the T&T pass­port now the 7th most pow­er­ful one in the re­gion—a drop by one place. Mean­while, Bar­ba­dos main­tains its sta­tus as the most pow­er­ful pass­port in the Caribbean with pass­port hold­ers able to ac­cess 165 des­ti­na­tions visa-free. This al­so puts it at #19 (along­side Brunei) on the over­all stand­ings, its best-ever fin­ish. The Ba­hamas, St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, St. Kitts and Nevis, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and Grena­da oc­cu­py spots 2-6 of the Caribbean rank­ings.

As for the top three pass­ports, well they come from Asia—Sin­ga­pore in first po­si­tion with ac­cess to 192 des­ti­na­tions and Japan and South Ko­rea tied for sec­ond with ac­cess to 188 des­ti­na­tions. Afghanistan re­mains at the bot­tom of the rank­ings with ac­cess to a mere 24 des­ti­na­tions.

“Pass­port pow­er ul­ti­mate­ly re­flects po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, diplo­mat­ic cred­i­bil­i­ty, and the abil­i­ty to shape in­ter­na­tion­al rules”, says Misha Glen­ny, award-win­ning jour­nal­ist and Rec­tor of the In­sti­tute for Hu­man Sci­ences in Vi­en­na in a re­lease from Hen­ley & Part­ners.

T&T's pass­port strength was im­pact­ed by last year's de­ci­sion by the UK gov­ern­ment to re­voke visa-free ac­cess for na­tion­als. Ire­land fol­lowed suit with­in weeks, the Min­is­ter of State for Mi­gra­tion Colm Bro­phy said de­spite op­er­at­ing an in­de­pen­dent visa regime, the move would "bring Ire­land in­to clos­er align­ment with the Unit­ed King­dom".

Min­is­ter of For­eign & CARI­COM Af­fairs Sean Sobers has been work­ing with UK of­fi­cials to re­store visa-free ac­cess since the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice. He told Guardian Me­dia that last year, the core is­sue was the ab­sence of leg­is­la­tion to no­ti­fy the UK in ad­vance of trav­ellers de­part­ing T&T.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter Sobers to ask for an up­date on whether leg­is­la­tion had been draft­ed and we await a re­sponse.

Cre­at­ed 20 years ago, the in­dex ranks all the world’s pass­ports ac­cord­ing to the num­ber of des­ti­na­tions their hold­ers can ac­cess with­out a pri­or visa. It is based on Timat­ic da­ta from the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA) and en­hanced by ex­ten­sive, on­go­ing re­search by the Hen­ley & Part­ners Re­search De­part­ment.