The United States is well known for its concentration of wealth at the upper end of the spectrum. A household in the United States must have a net worth of roughly 13 to 14 million US dollars to be in the “top one percent,” whereas in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom the comparable figures are around 3.5 million, at least according to the AI assessments that I have consulted. The imbalance is even greater at the uppermost peak of personal wealth. The constantly updated Forbes list of “the world’s real-time billionaires” informed me that on May 12, 2016, the top eleven mega-billionaires all reside in the United States. Intriguingly, just a day earlier the same list placed France’s Bernard Arnault (along with several unspecified members of his family) in tenth place (see the table posted below). Evidently, the Arnaults were bypassed within 24 hours by both Jim Walton (& family) and Warren Buffett. (As can be inferred from the preceding sentence, the Forbes list is primarily based on individual wealth but sometimes ranks of the basis of family assets. I have ignored this important distinction in the maps and text that follow, as I have no way to disentangle personal from family wealth.)
Scanning through this list of the world’s richest people made me curious about the global geography of vast personal fortunes. I therefore decided to map the locations of the primary residences of the top 138 billionaires, those with assets valued at or above 20 billion US dollars on May 11, 2026. I used the same technique that I employed last December when mapping the world’s top publicly traded corporation by market capitalization; in both cases, I placed a hollow circle over the approximate main locations of those in question, with the circles roughly scaled to monetary “worth.” If multiple billionaires (primarily) live in the same city, their circles have been slightly displaced to maintain visibility. I relied on Google’s AI service (Gemini) to determine the locations of the current main residences of these 138 mega-billionaires.
As the map shows, the primary residences of those with immense personal fortunes are concentrated in three major regions of the world (the United States, west-central Europe, and maritime East Asia) and three minor regions (Dubai, Moscow, and “Greater Mumbai”). As the map also indicates, only 15 of the 138 top billionaires live outside of these six regions. Their primary residences are indicated in pink text on the map.
The United States is clearly the world’s top region of immense personal fortunes, with the largest number of mega-billionaires controlling the largest stockpiles of wealth. It is also the most extensive region of these regions, as its mega-billionaires are more spatially dispersed than those of maritime East Asia and, especially, west-central Europe. I will further examine the distribution of huge fortunes in the U.S. in a later post. (Note that I have intentionally limited this region to the United States, excluding the one Canadian mega-billionaire, who is based in nearby Toronto. I have done so largely because of the strikingly different economic and political environments of the two countries, although this was not an easy judgement call.)
The compact region of huge fortunes that I have labeled “west-central Europe” extends from London south to southeastern France and eastward to Czechia. It is anchored by Switzerland and southern Germany. Despite appearances, Italy is not represented on the map. Three Italians are included, but they have evidently relocated their primary residences to nearby countries. This disjunction shows both the hazard of relying on AI for such information (see the figure below) and the propensity of the super-wealthy to seek favorable countries for their primary residences. Note also that one of the largest circles in Europe falls outside this core region. It represents the 132.5-billion-dollar fortune of Amancio Ortega, a pioneer of “fast fashion” who is most closely identified with the Zara retail chain. Ortega lives primarily in an apartment in the peripheral Spanish city La Coruña (officially, “A Coruña” in the local Galician language). He moved there with his family at the age of 14, leaving school and apprenticing himself to a local shirtmaker. Intriguingly, the other outlying circle in Europe, which is centered on Stockholm, represents another fortune derived from “fast fashion,” that of Stefan Persson, former chair of H&M.
The region that I label “maritime East Asia” is anchored on coastal China but extends across South Korea (with one circle) to Japan (with four). Intriguingly, one of these circles in Japan represents a prominent Chinese businessman, Jack Ma; as Gemini tells me, “As of 2026, Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma has been primarily living in Tokyo, Japan, following a long-term, low-profile lifestyle away from China after regulatory crackdowns on his businesses. He frequently travels to other locations, with his family recently acquiring a £19.5 million mansion in London’s Belgravia district.” This maritime East Asian region is also depicted as including Hanoi in northern Vietnam, which is home to Nhật Vượng, leader of the Vingroup conglomerate. It does not include the (supposedly) autonomous region of Ningxia in central China, which is home to Dang Yanbao, chairman of an important coal and chemical company (residing in the city of Yinchuan).
The three secondary regions of mega-billionaire concentration are focused on a single city. All Russian oligarchs with fortunes greater than $20 billion live in Moscow. Most Indian mega-billionaires live in Mumbai, although one resides in nearby Pune and another in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, which is not too far off (hence “Greater Mumbai”). Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, has a growing number of foreign-born mega-billionaires, most of whom are attracted by its low taxes and business-friendly policies.
Outside of these six core regions, only three countries are home to more than one mega-billionaire: Australia (with three); Mexico (with two); and Singapore (with two). Interestingly, two of Australia’s three representatives live in Perth, far from the country’s southeastern core. This seeming oddity is indicative of Western Australia’s vast mineral resources. As can be seen on the map, only one mega-billionaire lives in South America, although the fortune of Chile’s Iris Fontbona is vast indeed (over $50 billion). Africa is represented only by Aliko Dangote of Lagos, Nigeria. His firm, the Dangote group, is noted for its interests in cement, sugar, fertilizer, and oil refining.
I am curious about whether these geographical patterns hold when one moves down the list to consider fortunes between 10 and 20 billion US dollars, which are still extraordinarily large. This may be the topic of a future GeoCurrents post.
Finally, in the interest of legibility I have divided these data into four categories, mapping each one separately. The first map posted below shows fortunes greater than $50 billion, the second those between $30 and $50 billion, the third those between $25 and 30 billion, and the fourth those between $20 and 25 billion.
