The best second passport for visa-free travel depends on yours

isvisarequired.com · 2026-09-16

Say you hold a German passport and the chance of a second one comes up. Ireland looks like the obvious choice: on our count its passport reaches 150 destinations without an advance application, one more than yours. Benin's reaches 57, so it looks like no choice at all.

Do the sums and the Irish passport adds two destinations you can't already reach. The Beninese one adds 14.

There is no single best second passport for visa-free travel. What a second passport is worth depends on the one you already hold, and overlap matters more than strength. One document does come out on top whatever you start with: the United Arab Emirates gave the biggest gain for every first passport we tested.

How we count visa-free access

A destination counts only if you can turn up without applying for anything first, either visa-free or with a visa issued on arrival. Our dataset covers 195 countries, so each passport is scored against the other 194. eVisas and electronic travel authorisations don't count, because both need approval before you board. The methodology page explains where the underlying data comes from and how it's checked.

That rule is why our numbers look low. They run 20 to 30 below the figures you'll see on citizenship-by-investment sites. The UAE government's fact sheet says an Emirati passport reaches 179 countries, 45 of them by eVisa or visa on arrival. We count 156. The same page credits a private commercial index for its claim to first place, so even a government's headline figure turns out to be borrowed rather than measured.

Leaving out travel authorisations isn't pedantry. The Home Office itself says "An ETA is not a visa, it is a digital permission to travel", in the announcement extending it to European visitors from 2 April 2025. You still have to apply for one before you travel, and it costs £20. Europe's ETIAS works the same way, at €20 for three years, and we exclude it too.

Since 10 April 2025 Brazil has required Australian, Canadian and US nationals to buy an electronic visa costing US$80.90, so Brazil counts on a British passport and not on an American one.

The Twelve Apostles, on Australia's Southern Ocean coast — a reminder that a high ranking is not the same as an open border. In our data Australia lets exactly one nationality arrive without arranging entry first: New Zealanders. Photo: Dietmar Rabich / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

If your passport is weak, pick the strongest second one

At the bottom of the table there's so little overlap left to lose that raw strength wins. A Pakistani passport reaches 25 destinations; an Emirati one reaches 156, so the gain is 131 and overlap never enters into it.

A Nigerian passport (42 destinations) gains 123 from the UAE and 121 from South Korea. An Indian one (50) gains 108 from the UAE and 102 from Ireland.

India doesn't allow dual citizenship, though, so treat those two figures as arithmetic rather than advice. Under section 9 of the Citizenship Act 1955, Indian citizenship ends when you voluntarily acquire another, and the Ministry of External Affairs is firm that OCI status is not dual citizenship either. For an adult there is no lawful way to hold both. The narrow exception is a child who is Indian by descent, who may keep a second citizenship only until six months after reaching full age.

Two strong passports barely add anything

Germany reaches 149 destinations. Ireland reaches 150. Hold both and you reach 151.

The two extra destinations are the United Kingdom and Uganda, and neither is in the EU. Inside the Union the overlap is total by law, because EU free movement rules forbid member states from imposing an entry visa or any equivalent formality on Union citizens.

The UK is on the list because Irish citizens, dual citizens included, are the one European nationality exempt from the UK's ETA, while every other EU, EEA and Swiss national needs one. An Irish citizen has needed no permission at all to enter the UK since long before anyone thought of an ETA — that is the Common Travel Area, and it is decades older than the scheme. Uganda is there for a duller reason: Ireland appears on the Ugandan immigration directorate's visa-exempt list of 37 countries, and Germany doesn't.

Across the Atlantic, a US passport holder who adds a British one gains five destinations: Belarus, Brazil, China, Vietnam and Venezuela, though Venezuela sits in our data without a published instrument behind it. Belarus gives 30 days to 38 European states, the UK among them. Vietnam's 45-day exemption covers Britain, Germany, Japan and South Korea but not the US, and China's visa waiver now covers the UK and Canada.

So if travel is the only reason you want a second passport and you already hold a strong one, the arithmetic is unkind. There may be good reasons to want Irish citizenship on top of German. Getting through more borders isn't one of them.

Why a West African passport can beat an Irish one

Ireland's two is the floor. Set five other candidates against that same German passport and what each one opens on its own turns out to say very little about what it adds.

Benin's passport opens just over a third as many destinations as Ireland's, yet adds seven times as many. Seven are ECOWAS neighbours (Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Nigeria and Togo), plus Mali and Niger, plus Kenya, plus four more we carry from our own data without a published instrument: Central African Republic, Chad, Cuba and Republic of the Congo.

Those first seven come from one legal instrument. Under the ECOWAS Protocol A/P.1/5/79, a citizen of one member state can visit another for up to 90 days without a visa. That's free movement rather than an open border: you still need a valid travel document and a health certificate, and each state keeps the right to refuse someone it considers inadmissible.

Mali and Niger left ECOWAS on 29 January 2025 and are no longer bound by the Protocol. A Beninese traveller still gets in, under the Sahel states' own declaration of 14 December 2024, which makes their confederation a visa-free space for ECOWAS nationals, subject to national law.

A traveller from any of 28 named African countries, Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Tunisia and Nigeria among them, is exempt from Kenya's eTA for stays of up to 60 days. That comes from Legal Notice No. 93 of 30 May 2025. Germans, Britons and Americans have to apply.

A Beninese or Tunisian traveller must apply to visit Germany; an Emirati or Brazilian one simply turns up. EU visa rules put them on opposite lists. So the Beninese passport holder applies to visit Germany and the German passport holder applies to visit Kenya, which is what people miss when they talk about strength as a single number. It has a direction, and our reciprocity data shows it pair by pair.

Burkina Faso left ECOWAS on the same day as Mali and Niger, and ECOWAS said citizens of all three would keep their movement and residence rights "until further notice". That makes its row the least stable of the five.

Why the UAE passport tops every combination

The Emirati passport is the only one in our data that is both near-universal, at 156 destinations, and able to reach places most strong Western passports can't: Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — and, for an American, China too. Only the Indian and Chinese entries trace to a published rule; the rest we carry from our own data. A German passport gains 15 destinations from it, a Japanese one 16, a British one 17, an American one 19 and a Brazilian one 22.

China's unilateral waiver covers the 50 countries on the National Immigration Administration's visa-exemption list, for stays of up to 30 days. Germany, Ireland, Japan, South Korea and Brazil are on it, and the UK and Canada joined from 17 February 2026. The United States isn't. The UAE gets in through a different door altogether, a mutual visa exemption with China that has been in force since 16 January 2018.

India grants visa on arrival to only three nationalities, Japan, South Korea and the UAE, and the Emirati version has a catch. According to India's Bureau of Immigration it applies only to people who have previously held an e-Visa or a regular paper visa for India. It costs Rs 2,000 and is available at six airports. In practice, an Emirati passport gets you into India on arrival on your second visit, not your first.

Himeji Castle, completed in 1609. A headline country count hides the thing that matters: whether the destinations a pairing adds are places you would ever go. Photo: Martin Falbisoner / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

What a second passport doesn't change

All of this measures travel access and nothing more. It tells you nothing about the right to live or work anywhere, or about the tax, military-service and renunciation consequences that usually decide whether a second nationality makes sense.

US citizens are taxed on their worldwide income wherever they live, and US law requires them, with limited exceptions, to use a US passport to leave and enter the United States. A second passport does nothing for you at a US border; it only starts working once you're outside.

Germany runs the other way. It stopped requiring its citizens to get a retention permit before taking a foreign nationality when its reformed nationality law came into force on 27 June 2024. Whether the other country accepts dual nationality is a matter for its own law.

None of this is legal advice, and we don't rank citizenship-by-investment programmes. If you're weighing up a particular pair, run it through our dual citizenship tool, which works out the marginal gain for up to three passports against the same data. Once you hold two, the guide to which passport to use at which border covers the practical side.

Common questions

What is the best second passport for visa-free travel?

On our count, the United Arab Emirates. It reaches 156 of 194 destinations and gave the largest gain for every first passport we tested, mainly because it opens places such as Russia, India and Pakistan that the strong Western passports don't.

How do you work out combined visa-free access with two passports?

Take the union of the two lists, not the sum. Across all 194 destinations, count the ones the second passport reaches and the first doesn't, and that difference is the marginal gain. It's why two strong passports usually add so little to each other.

Is a second EU passport worth having for travel if I already hold one?

Barely. No member state can require an entry visa from an EU citizen, so two EU passports cover exactly the same ground inside the Union. An Irish passport adds only the UK and Uganda to a German one.

Do Irish citizens need a UK ETA?

No, and that includes Irish dual citizens. Other EU, EEA and Swiss nationals visiting without a visa have needed one since 2 April 2025, unless they hold status under the EU Settlement Scheme. It costs £20 and lasts two years, or until the passport expires if that's sooner.

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