Global wealth on the rise: how far people’s financial reach has grown in 2026
30 JUN, 2026
By Joanna Piwko from RankiaPro Europe
The world got richer in 2025, and it did so quickly. According to UBS's Global Wealth Report 2026, personal wealth across the 56 markets it tracks rose by 10.8% in US dollar terms – more than double the growth recorded in each of the two previous years. It's the third consecutive year of expansion, and it marks one of the most dramatic increases in how much financial ground ordinary people now cover, even as the benefits of that growth were spread unevenly around the globe.
A year of extraordinary gains
Strong financial markets pushed up the value of investment portfolios, but that wasn't the whole story. Non-financial wealth – primarily property – also climbed substantially, suggesting a broader lift in living standards rather than a narrow market rally. Household debt, meanwhile, rose at its fastest pace since 2017, normalizing after a rare year of deleveraging in 2024.
Yet the headline figure masks a more complicated reality: while average wealth rose sharply, median wealth actually fell in most markets. That gap between the average and the typical person's experience is the clearest sign that gains were concentrated rather than universal.
Europe and the Middle East surge ahead
Regional performance varied enormously. Europe and the Middle East posted the strongest growth of any region, with wealth rising by almost 18%, driven in large part by a weaker US dollar that flattered returns measured in USD. Eastern Europe alone surged by 28%, while Western Europe grew by nearly 17%. The Americas grew a more modest 8.5%, and Asia-Pacific lagged at just under 5.9%.
These shifts reshuffled the global map slightly: EMEA's share of global wealth climbed from just under 25% to more than 26%, almost entirely at the expense of Asia-Pacific, whose share slipped from 36% to 32.8%. The Americas held steady at around 40%.
Still, just two markets – the United States and Greater China – together account for more than half of the personal wealth in UBS's sample, with the US alone holding nearly 36%.
Millionaires everywhere, in record numbers
Perhaps the most striking sign of how far people's wealth has reached is the millionaire count. For the first time, every single market UBS tracks ended 2025 with more US-dollar millionaires than it started with. Nearly one million new millionaires were created worldwide last year – more than 2,680 a day – with the United States responsible for almost half of that growth, adding over 1,200 new millionaires daily.
Eastern Europe posted the fastest percentage growth, led by Lithuania at 8%, followed by Türkiye, Latvia and Hungary. In absolute terms, though, scale still favors the largest economies: the US is home to over 23.6 million of the world's roughly 57.5 million millionaires, more than 40% of the global total.
Beyond the millionaire mark, UBS also tracked the fast-expanding tier of high-net-worth individuals holding between USD 5 million and USD 100 million – a group of roughly seven million people worldwide. Mainland China stood out here, with this segment's numbers and collective wealth compounding at over 20% annually since 2000, in one bracket touching nearly 31%.
The wealth pyramid is changing shape
UBS's data suggests the classic "wealth pyramid" – wide at the bottom, narrow at the top – may not hold its shape much longer. As of the end of 2025, 1.5% of adults in the sample own more than USD 1 million, while the share of people with less than USD 10,000 in net assets continues to shrink. The middle bands, particularly those between USD 10,000 and USD 100,000, are expanding steadily, a sign of gradual upward mobility across much of the world.
That said, wealth inequality hasn't disappeared – measured by the Gini coefficient, countries like the UAE, Russia, South Africa and Brazil remain among the most unequal in the sample, while Slovakia, Belgium and Qatar sit at the more equal end.
Why the numbers don't tell one single story
UBS is careful to note that "how wealthy" a country looks depends heavily on which yardstick is used. Switzerland tops the average-wealth-per-adult ranking but drops to eighth on median wealth; the United States ranks second on average wealth but only 28th by median. Luxembourg is the only market that lands consistently near the top across average wealth, median wealth and GDP per adult – a reminder that headline wealth growth and the lived experience of typical households can diverge sharply.
The bigger picture
Taken together, the report paints a picture of a world where personal wealth – and the financial reach of the people holding it – has expanded at a remarkable pace, lifting millions into the millionaire bracket and pushing more people out of the lowest wealth tiers than ever before. But that reach has grown unevenly: currency swings, regional market performance and existing inequality all shape who actually feels richer. As UBS's Chief Economist Paul Donovan puts it, people tend to measure their wealth not in absolute terms, but relative to others – meaning that even amid record-breaking growth, the political and social question of fairness is becoming more visible, not less.
