The 20th edition of the Wealth Report might be Knight Frank’s most consequential yet. Analysing wealth trends throughout 2026, the revised and extended Wealth Sizing Model puts precise figures on a global wealth creation story that’s accelerating rather than moderating.
For anyone operating in prime and super-prime real estate, the numbers are worth understanding in full. You can access the complete report via Knight Frank. But what follows here is our read of the headline wealth data and what it signals for the markets we cover.
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1. The pace is faster than it looks
Between 2021 and 2026, the global population of UHNWIs – those with net worth above US$30 million – rose from 551,435 to 713,626. That is 162,191 new entrants in five years, or 89 people crossing the US $30 million threshold every single day. Read that figure again: nearly 100 people every single day. Knight Frank projects the cohort will reach 948,241 by 2031 – a further 33% increase on today’s figure. The rate of creation is not slowing.
2. American dominance is deepening, not plateauing
The US accounted for 41% of all newly minted UHNWIs over the five-year period and its global share is projected to rise from 35% in 2026 to 41% by 2031. In absolute terms, the US is set to add over 136,000 UHNWIs in the next five years – dwarfing the entire UHNW population of most world regions. The combination of deep capital markets, the AI and tech boom, and a vast domestic economy means American wealth creation is compounding at industrial scale, and every prime hub that competes for international capital sits downstream of this.
3. China is easing – not in retreat
China’s share of global UHNWIs slipped from 18% in 2021 to 17% in 2026 and is projected to ease further to 15% by 2031. This relative dilution is almost entirely attributable to the scale of US expansion – in absolute terms, Chinese UHNW numbers continue to grow. The dynamic matters for prime markets that rely on mainland Chinese buyer flows, particularly in Hong Kong, Singapore and parts of Europe.
4. India is the structural growth story
India’s UHNW population surged 63% between 2021 and 2026, rising from just over 12,000 to nearly 20,000. Growth is forecast to continue at a more measured 27% through to 2031, reaching 25,217 – a consolidation rather than a reversal, as capital from technology, industrials and domestic equity markets matures into more sophisticated family office structures. India is not a future story; it is a present one that the prime sector has been slow to price in.
5. New wealth centres are forming faster than expected
Knight Frank’s fastest five-year UHNW growth forecasts are led by Indonesia (+82%), Saudi Arabia (+63%), Poland (+63%) and Vietnam (+59%). These are not aspirational markets being talked up – they are wealth pools actively forming, with domestic capital increasingly seeking international-quality real estate, lifestyle assets and family office infrastructure. Australia sits at a different point in this trajectory: its UHNW population is forecast to rise nearly 60% to 26,095 by 2031, driven by a genuinely diversified economic base rather than a single sector cycle.
6. The billionaire tier is being refreshed from below
Saudi Arabia’s billionaire population is forecast to roughly triple by 2031. Poland (+123%), Sweden (+81%) and Australia (+77%) follow. These are not markets with established billionaire ecosystems – they are markets where first-generation extreme wealth is now scaling. The implication for prime property is that the top tier of the market is being refreshed by buyers still in their first decade of serious asset acquisition: motivated, capital-rich, and largely unfamiliar with established prime market conventions.
A View From The Super Prime
Traditional prime markets know where the money is. The question is whether it knows where the money is coming from next.
The number that keeps returning to us is not the global UHNW total, or even the US dominance figure. It’s the mobility one.
Knight Frank’s own data, and our own research into capital trends from the past year, points to the same underlying shift: wealth is becoming structurally footloose in a way it has not been before.
A record 142,000 HNWIs relocated internationally in 2025, with 165,000 projected in 2026. The UK alone lost 16,500 wealthy residents in a single year – the largest single-year exodus ever recorded.
The UAE absorbed nearly 10,000 net inflows. Saudi Arabia posted an eight-fold increase in inbound millionaires year on year.
Faster diversification than ever before
What Knight Frank’s adds to that picture is the supply side: the pipeline of newly minted UHNWIs that will fuel the next decade of prime demand is wider and more geographically distributed than at any point since the Wealth Report began in 2007.
Indonesia, Vietnam, Poland, Saudi Arabia – these are not markets that were producing meaningful super-prime buyer cohorts five years ago.
The strategic implication is one that prime developers, branded residence operators and wealth advisers should be taking seriously: the buyer universe for the world’s most expensive real estate is diversifying by nationality faster than most market-facing teams are diversifying outreach. American, British and Chinese buyers remain dominant in absolute terms.
But the marginal buyer – the one who decides whether a super-prime market curves upward or stalls – is increasingly likely to come from emerging markets. Those buyers are not yet being reached through the same channels that have served the prime sector for the past 20 years.
It’s now more important than ever for those measuring the sector to act as the bridge to these emerging destinations, be it a boots-on-the-ground consultative manner or arbiters of market intelligence.
If they do not, the traditional prime market’s distribution network will fail to keep pace with where the new money is being made.
