There are Only Four Passport Colors in the World, and This is the Reason Why

It turns out that there are only four primary passport colors in the world, and each country has its own reasons for choosing one of these colors for the cover.

Bright Side decided to find out what this choice depends on and to share the information with you. If long lines at the airport makes you feel bored, just remember this post.

Red

This is the most common color. Citizens of Slovenia, China, Serbia, Russia, Latvia, Romania, Poland, and Georgia have red passports. Member countries of the European Union, except Croatia, also use passports of burgundy and other shades of red. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru — also have burgundy passports.

Blue

This is the next most common color. The blue cover symbolizes the "new world". 15 Caribbean countries have blue passports. Within the block of South American countries the blue passport cover symbolizes the connection with Mercosur — a trade union. This includes Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. Venezuela is the exception here: it also belongs to the union, but its citizens have red passports. The passports of US citizens were changed to blue only in 1976.

Green

Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan have green passports. Green is considered a symbol of nature and life. The citizens of several West African countries — for example, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal — also have travel documents that are various shades of green.

Black

The rarest passports are those with black covers. These can be found among the citizens of some African countries — Botswana, Zambia, Burundi, Gabon, Angola, Chad, Congo, Malawi and others. Citizens of New Zealand also have black passport covers, because black is the country’s national color.

The map below is painted according to the color of each country’s passport.