Whether you need a visa depends on three things: your nationality, the document you travel on, and any residence permits or visas you already hold. Here is a short guide to each.
Visa-free regimes almost always depend on nationality and an ordinary national passport. With any other document the rules can be completely different.
The main travel document. 'Visa-free for citizens of X' almost always means a citizen of X with an ordinary passport of X. Validity matters: many countries require the passport to be valid 3–6 months beyond departure — the checker takes this into account.
Separate agreements apply: sometimes visa-free where an ordinary passport needs a visa, sometimes the other way round. Usually meant for official travel only.
Issued by a consulate to replace a lost passport, usually to get home. Many countries do not accept it for visa-free entry (e.g. Taiwan and Kuwait) — expect to need a visa.
Titre de voyage pour réfugié in France, the 'blue passport' (Reiseausweis für Flüchtlinge) in Germany, the Convention travel document in the UK. Issued by the country that granted asylum. Your nationality's visa-free access does not apply to it, and it cannot be used to travel to your country of nationality.
Details and list of countries →Issued to recognised stateless persons under the 1954 Convention (titre de voyage pour apatride in France). The rules resemble the refugee document: countries look at the issuing country and your residence permit, not at nationality.
Details and list of countries →A French document for foreigners who cannot obtain a passport from their own country — most often subsidiary protection holders. Germany's equivalent is the Reiseausweis für Ausländer ('grey passport'). It is not a passport: visa-free access by nationality usually does not apply.
Details and list of countries →A visa is permission to enter and stay for a set period. Short-stay (Schengen type C) is for tourism and trips of up to 90 days; long-stay or national (Schengen type D) is for study, work or moving.
A residence permit (titre de séjour) is the right to live in a country. It is not a travel document: you travel with it together with your passport or titre de voyage.
Permanent residence — e.g. the carte de résident in France or the US green card. It usually gives everything a residence permit does, sometimes more.
A residence permit or national D visa of one Schengen country lets you travel across the Schengen area for up to 90 days in any 180 — with a passport or with a travel document issued by the same country.
Many countries waive or simplify visas for holders of a residence permit or visa from Schengen, the US, the UK and some other countries. Below is how many countries in our database give such a benefit; each page has the full list with conditions.