Entrepreneurs are famously driven by a love of what they do, and a determination to make their efforts in business flourish for themselves, their employees, and clients. Still, at times additional motivation can be derived from knowing how much the most successful company founders and investors have amassed from their work—and, just as interesting, which corners of the world those affluent people are choosing to live in.
The ranks of the world’s ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI)—or those worth $30 million or more—have been increasing considerably of late. According to the recently released Knight Frank’s Wealth Report 2026, the global population of 551,435 UHNWIs in 2021 surged to 713,626 this year, and is forecast to further increase to nearly 950,000 by 2031. While smaller at 3,100 people in 2026, the number of billionaires worldwide is expected to reach 3,915 within the next half decade. Those are trends you’ll want to be part of, if at all possible.
Moreover, a sizeable and growing portion of those affluent people are moving to new countries for both personal and financial reasons. Yet Knight Frank says the stability of nearly two decades of “falling inflation, abundant liquidity, and an increasingly globalized economic system” that made such migration desirable and easy appear to have come to an end.
On the one hand, many income-starved countries are changing their tax laws and residence requirements in ways that somewhat diminish their allure to finance-focused UHNWIs.
Worse still, today’s world has become anything but stable. That’s depriving affluent people the same visibility and predictability that countless business leaders say they’ve been stripped of amid rising prices, import tariffs and trade disputes, labor force disruptions, and geopolitical upheavals.
“Recent events, brought into sharp focus by the conflict in Iran, have reinforced a pattern already established by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine: shocks are becoming more frequent, more unpredictable, and more deeply embedded in the global economic system,” the Knight Frank report said in describing how decreased visibility into the future is changing UHNWI thinking. “In a more uncertain world, the challenge for private investors is no longer simply to grow wealth, but to preserve, position, and deploy it intelligently.”
That’s causing more UHNWIs to stick closer to home, or select what they consider the most stable regions when they do move.
As a result, North America now plays home to 37 percent of the world’s ultra-wealthy, followed by 31 percent in Asia, and about a quarter in Europe. Yet even changes afoot on the relatively stable Old Continent are causing shifts in which European nations the very affluent choose to live.
According to residence and citizenship planning specialist Henley & Partners, European Union “heavyweights France, Spain, and Germany are expected to see net” decreases of ultra-wealthy residents, with Ireland, Norway, and Sweden also likely to see reductions. By contrast, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, Greece, and city-state Monaco are among the nations in Europe likely to take in those and other millionaires on the move. The reasons for that windfall?
“(F)avorable tax regimes, lifestyle appeal, and active investment migration programs,” the Henley & Partners report said. “Southern Europe is fast emerging as a new center of gravity for wealth migration in the region.”
Despite the changes in UHNWI flows from certain European countries to others, rankings of nations with the largest populations of very affluent residents remained largely the same in 2026. That was led by Germany with over 38,300 inhabitants worth $30 million or more, followed by the U.K. (27,876), France (21,518), and Switzerland (17,692).
The continent’s contingent of both temporary and permanent ultra-rich residents may will increase even more, with global millionaires and billionaires who settled in Arab Gulf emirates now fleeing the violence in the Middle East.
But despite those rising inflows, financial and demographic experts note the size of Europe’s UHNWI pool isn’t the only category set to increase in coming years. Immigrants from emerging nations will also likely increase considerably in number, despite their presence already being as big a hot button a political issue in Europe as it now is in the U.S.
But why would immigration to Europe spike if it’s already a subject of debate? Mostly, because the both continent’s wealthy and less affluent inhabitants are going to need more workers to keep economies moving as the overall population declines.
According to EU data service Eurostat, the bloc’s residents are slated to decrease by 11.7 percent before the end of the century—shrinking from around 452 million people now to 399 million by the year 2100.
By that date, moreover, projections also forecast a third of all EU inhabitants will be aged 65 or older, with most of those retired. That means virtually certain labor force shortfalls affecting all European Union economies and inhabitants, no matter how wealthy they are.
Where will those workforce pinches be the most severe? Apart from small population increases expected in Norway and Sweden, all EU nations currently with the biggest UHNWI communities—or those welcoming the ultra-affluent at the fastest-growing rates—are set to experience declines of between 2.5 percent and a bit more than 30 percent.
That, in turn, virtually ensures newly arriving and laterally moving UHNWI residents in Europe will likely face the same labor and economic disruptions that declines in demographics are expected to create across all European societies.
“Migration is the only factor that can ensure population growth in Europe,” Dmitri Jdanov, an official at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research told the Euronews media platform “Obviously, assumptions regarding migration differ from country to country.”
Under current trends, that can also be said for both near- and long-term future moves by world’s very wealthy people, as changes across the globe increase in frequency and severity.
—Bruce Crumley
This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
