Where the Super Rich Reside

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2 hours ago
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This article is published in collaboration with Statista

by Katharina Buchholz

According to the Forbes World's Billionaires List of 2026, many of the world's richest people are citizens of the United States. The country counted 989 billionaires per the list's last release Tuesday. This is far ahead of the second-ranked country, China (with 610) and third-placed India with 229.

According to Forbes, 390 new billionaire were minted in the last year, translating into more than one a day and pushing up the number of billionaires worldwide to more than 3,400. This included the first billionaires from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Despite coming from neighboring countries, the two men's success stories are different. While Afghan national Mirwais Azizi is a 63-year-old real estate developer based in Dubai, Pakistan's Sualeh Asif is only 26 and co-founded AI coding tool Cursor in the U.S. with three friends from MIT.

After the U.S., China and India, Germany has the biggest number of billionaires at 212, followed by Russia at 147.

Also new on the list in 2026 are well-known celebrities like singer Beyonce Knowles-Carter, tennis player Roger Federer, rapper Dr. Dre and movie director James Cameron. Other notable female newcomers include China’s Zhou Xiaoping, who is the cofounder of Changzhou Xingyu Automotive Lighting Systems and entered the list with the highest female self-made fortune of 2026 ($3.8 billion), as well as Amelie Voigt Trejes, the world's youngest billionaire ever at 20 after inheriting part of a family fortune from her grandfather, the cofounder of Brazilian electrical equipment company WEG.

2026 also saw a new all-time youngest self-made billionaire in Surya Midha. The 22-year old American with Indian roots cofounded AI recruiting tool Mercor with two university friends just slightly older. Another Brazilian, Luana Lopes Lara, is now the youngest ever self-made female billionaire at 29 after cofounding prediction market firm Kalshi.

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