× Alpahbet Passport FAQ

How does the Alphabet Passport work?

Add every country that you visit to your Alphabet Passport. When you have added a country that starts with a letter that no other country on your passport begins with, you will be awarded that new letter. The goal is to have all the letters on your passport.

What constitutes a visit?

You need to have crossed immigration to add a new country to your passport. Transiting through a country where you do not pass through immigration does not count.

What constitutes a country?

For the purposes of the Alphabet Passport, a letter can only be achieved if the country is a UN Member States. Full list of member states can be found here.

In addition, you can achieve bonus points by visiting non-member states that are represented on the CIA Factbook’s list of countries. While visiting one of these non-member states will not give you a letter, they can be used towards your points total and towards achieving “Hard Letters".

What are “Soft Letters” and “Hard Letters”?

When you have visited all UN Member States that begin with a particular letter, you will be awarded that “Soft Letter”. If you have also visited all other non-member states that begin with that letter or there are no other non-member states that begin with that letter, your “Soft Letter” will be upgraded to a “Hard Letter”. Achieving a Soft or Hard Letter earns you extra points in the scoring, as well as greater respect. Note that you cannot achieve a Hard Letter without also having achieved a Soft Letter.

What about “X” and “W”?

Since there are no UN Member States that begin with “X” or “W”, these letters are automatically awarded to everyone. In the case of “X”, there are also no other non-member states that begin with this letter and so everyone is automatically awarded a Hard X. In the Case of “W”, there are two non-member states that begin with a “W” and thus everyone is only automatically awarded a Soft W.

Who decides what letter a country starts with?

There are a number of countries that could arguably be included for multiple letters. For instance, South Korea could fall under “S” or “R” for Republic of Korea. In this case, South Korea would count towards “R” as this is how it is recognized by the UN in their letter delineation. For non-member states, the letter is based on the CIA classification of that country.

For non-member states that are also part of UN Members States, do I get both countries on my passport?

This is a bit of a contentious issue, but we have decided that you will only get the non-member country by default. For instance, if you have visited Hong Kong, but not other parts of China, you will not be entitled to add China to your passport, but only Hong Kong.

How does the scoring work?

Achievement Points New UN Member State 2 New Other State 1 New Letter 8 Soft Letter 10 Hard Letter 15 Complete Alphabet 500 Complete Soft Alphabet 1,000 Complete Hard Alphabet 10,000

What is the maximum score achievable?

There are currently 193 UN Member States. We have included an additional 57 non-member states (including Antarctica). Thus, the maximum score achievable is 11,541 outlined below.

Achievement Points Max Scenario Awards Points UN Member State 2 193 386 Other State 1 57 57 Letters 8 26 208 Soft Letters 10 0 0 Hard Letters 15 26 390 Alphabet 500 1 500 Soft Alphabet 1,000 0 0 Hard Alphabet 10,000 1 10,000 Max Points Possible 11,541

The highest achievable score without completing the alphabet is 1,016.

What is the minimum score achievable?

Since everyone starts out with a Hard X and a Soft W, they will have a minimum of 41 (23 for Hard X and 18 for Soft W), but since everyone should have at least one country (where they live), they will also need to include this. Conceivably, somebody who has spent their whole life on Wallis and Fatuna or Wake Island would have a score of 42.

What country would get me the most points?

Oman, Qatar and Yemen are the only countries that begin with their respective letters. As such, visiting any of these three countries would result in a Hard O, Hard Q or Hard Y and a corresponding 25 points.

Where does the population and land area data come from?

Population data is from the UN Population estimates for 2013. For states not included in the list, population data was sourced from that country's Wikipedia page. Land area data was sourced from here.