Which country owns the world's most powerful passport?

Australians love to travel but how many countries does our passport allow us to go to without requiring a visa?

Not as many as Germany, which for the fifth year running has been announced as the country whose passport gives its travellers visa-free entry into the most countries.

The Henley Passport Index records the number of countries a passport can take you to without a visa and releases its figures each year.

Presently, German passport owners have visa-free access to a whopping 177 countries, up one from 176 a year ago.

Singaporeans possess another covetable passport, sitting at number two with access to 176 countries.

Third place is shared by eight different, mostly Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, plus Italy, Japan, France and the UK).

Western European countries dominated the fourth spot, with Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and Luxembourg all having access to 174 countries, while American passport holders are fifth-ranked with access to 173.

Australia did manage to make the top ten, sitting at number seven along with Greece and New Zealand, with visa-free access to 171 countries.

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Sitting at the bottom of the ranking are Pakistan, Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, all of which have access to 30 countries or less.

In the past 12 months the most upwardly mobile countries have been Georgia and Ukraine, both of which gained access to an extra 30 or more countries after the visa liberalisation process with the European Union was finalised in 2017.

The Henley Passport Index is based on information from the International Air Transport Association, which maintains the world’s biggest database of travel information.