Billionaires' wealth remains undeterred by global crises, rising by 25 percent between early 2025 and early 2026, a Forbes World's Billionaires List release showed yesterday. During the Covid-19 pandemic, when tech stocks soared, it took an even bigger step up, rising 64 percent between 2020 and 2021.
The number of billionaires worldwide surpassed 3,000 for the first time in 2025 and climbed to more than 3,400 this year. The number of billionaires increasing more incrementally than billionaire wealth means that the individual billionaire has become richer on average.
The $100 billion club also had a record 20 members as of March 1, 2026, the release stated, while five people owned more than $200 billion upon the creation of the list - Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg. Musk's wealth soared to an incredible $839 billion as of the cutoff date due to favorable stock market prices.
The United States had a record 989 billionaire citizens, 29 percent of all worldwide billionaires. China followed behind at 610 billionaires (including Hong Kong) ahead of India at 229. Almost 400 new billionaires were added to the list this year, including a first each from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Also new on the list are celebrities Beyonce Knowles-Carter, Roger Federer, Dr. Dre and James Cameron as well as 45 new AI billionaires, some of them only in their early 20s.
This year's 3,428 billionaires had a collective fortune of $20.1 trillion, or $5.9 billion each. This is in contrast to 2013, when average billionaire wealth stood at just $3.8 billion. While billionaires form the tip of global wealth inequality, they themselves exhibit an unequal distribution of wealth, with the above-mentioned 20 centibillionaires worth $3.8 trillon combined, which is more than the "bottom" 2,000 billionaires on the list own collectively.
