Global personal wealth increased for the third year running, UBS reports in its Global Wealth Report 2026, with average individual wealth rising faster than overall economic activity in 2025. Both financial and non-financial forms of wealth contributed to the advance, but the gains were not uniform across regions.
UBS Chief Economist Paul Donovan highlighted several drivers behind the patterns observed last year. While productivity improvements and compensation for investment risk remain core sources of wealth, Donovan said that luck - in particular being located advantageously during periods of structural change - can also play a role. On an annual horizon, he added, foreign exchange movements are the dominant factor shaping the relative performance of national wealth since underlying wealth drivers evolve slowly and trends persist for long periods.
The report points to household-balance-sheet dynamics as another important influence. Donovan noted that normalizing household debt levels has affected how wealth is modelled and has been visible in this year’s data. Demographic and ownership shifts - described in the report as the Great Wealth Transfer - continue to reallocate wealth across cohorts, and the rise in female wealth ownership is changing the ownership profile in many markets. Inflation, and to some extent rising living standards, also lifted more people out of the lowest wealth brackets during 2025, the report said.
Currency movements had a pronounced impact when wealth is denominated in U.S. dollars. UBS attributes part of the positive average wealth growth in dollar terms to weakness in the U.S. dollar in 2025, estimating currency-driven gains of 1.6% in Southeast Asia, almost 4.6% in Greater China, almost 8.8% in North America, nearly 17% in Western Europe, and 28% in Eastern Europe.
Concentration of wealth remains marked. More than half of global personal wealth measured in U.S. dollars is located in just two markets - the United States and Greater China. UBS quantifies regional shares as follows: the United States holds 37.5% of tracked personal wealth, Europe accounts for 22%, and Greater China represents 18.5%.
The Americas’ share of global wealth has been broadly stable at around 40%, according to the report.
Millionaire counts rose in 2025. UBS estimates the global millionaire population increased by 1.5% during the year, which it equates to roughly one million additional millionaires - about 2,680 new millionaires per day. The United States contributed the largest absolute increase: over 440,000 new millionaires in 2025, a 1.9% rise from 2024, or just over 1,200 additions per day. Notably, none of the 56 markets in UBS’s sample ended 2025 with fewer millionaires than at the outset of the year.
On public finances, the report observes that government debt ratios remain below their historical peaks, even though they are higher than in the recent past. UBS flagged that the Great Wealth Transfer is drawing political attention and suggested that governments are likely to consider measures to mobilize wealth as a means of reducing the cost of public borrowing.
UBS also examined the role of social media in shaping perceptions about wealth. The report argues that greater visibility of wealth differences on social platforms has intensified perceptions of inequality, even in places where measured inequality has narrowed. Conversely, where wealth is more broadly distributed across society, it is less likely to attract political scrutiny or spark social unrest, the report adds.
Taken together, the report portrays a wealth landscape in which currency swings, household balance-sheet adjustments, demographic transitions, and changing patterns of ownership are the chief forces reshaping wealth levels and distribution in 2025.