There are currently 3,110 multi-millionaires in the world, according to an analysis by real estate company Knight Frank. This number is expected to increase by 25 per cent over the next five years, bringing the total to 3,915.
The multi-millionaire class is also expanding rapidly, with the number of people with a net worth of at least 30 million dollars (around 25,638 million euros) worldwide rising from 162,191 dollars in 2021 to 716,626 today - an increase of more than 300 per cent, Knight Frank found.
Liam Bailey, head of real estate research, told the British newspaper The Guardian that the wealth of billionaires and millionaires has been "turbocharged" by profits from the world of technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI).
The Guardian:"Number of billionaires globally could reach 4,000 in next five years"
"The ability to expand a business has never been greater," he said. "This has contributed to the ability to amass large fortunes quickly, driven by technology and AI."
The number of billionaires is expected to grow fastest in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, according to the survey, more than doubling from 23 in 2026 to a forecast 65 in 2031. The population of multimillionaires in Poland is also expected to more than double, from 13 to 29 in the same period, with an 81 per cent increase in Sweden, from 32 to 58.
This comes at a time when inequality between the world's richest and poorest continues to grow. Last year, the World Inequality Report found that less than 60,000 people - 0.001 per cent of the world's population - control three times more wealth than the entire poorest half of humanity.
Calls are growing for global leaders to increase taxes on the super-rich, amid concerns that the richest in society are also buying political influence.
Solidarity organisation Oxfam found that a record number of multi-millionaires were created last year, bringing the total to over three thousand for the first time. According to the organisation, multi-millionaires have a collective wealth of 18.3 million billion dollars.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the richest person in the world, with a net worth of 785.5 billion dollars, according to the Forbes list of billionaires. Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, is in second place with a net worth of 272.5 billion dollars, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is in third place with a net worth of 259 billion dollars.
The Sunday Times rich list ranked the Hinduja family as Britain's richest, with a net worth of 35 billion pounds (around 40,396,825 euros) Gopichand Hinduja, the billionaire head of the family with interests in oil, banking and property, died aged 85 last year.
There were 156 multimillionaires living in the UK in 2025, according to the newspaper's list, which marked the biggest drop in its 37-year history, from 165 the previous year.
Reports of the super-rich fleeing Britain have proliferated over the last year, with many financial advisers attributing the trend to the abolition of the non-domiciled regime in the UK.
Liam Bailey added that political volatility, tax reform and stricter regulation were pushing the super-rich towards a smaller group of cities that offer "opportunities and predictability".
Rory Penn, who heads Knight Frank's private office practice, believes that wealth creation was increasing in a "more complex global economic scenario".
"The ultra-rich are becoming considerably more mobile, but the list of markets where they feel really comfortable investing or establishing their families has shrunk," emphasised Rory Penn.
North America is home to just under a third of the global population of multimillionaires, according to Knight Frank - however, its forecasts suggest that it will be overtaken by the Asia-Pacific region by 2031. By then, billionaires from this region are expected to represent 37.5 per cent of the total, compared to 27.8 per cent in North America.
An article written by Cristina Sambado - RTP, initially published on 23 April 2026 at 11:13 (CEST)