The 2026 edition of Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List is the biggest ever, with a record 3,428 ten-figure fortunes – a 50% jump in just the past five years. For comparison, when Forbes first published the list back in 1987, it counted only 140 billionaires worldwide. The collective net worth of the club has soared to an unprecedented $20 trillion – more than double its 2020 value of $9 trillion – with 400 new billionaires joining this year from countries including the United States, China, India, Russia, Albania, and Israel.
Despite a prolonged war and pervasive uncertainty, Israel hit a historic high of 52 billionaire citizens on this year’s list, up from 50 last year and just 42 in 2024. Their combined net worth surged in tandem, reaching approximately $308 billion – a 24% increase from 2025 ($250 billion) and a 50% jump from 2024 ($206 billion).
The sharp rise in Israeli private wealth isn’t merely a local phenomenon, nor is it just part of a broader global tailwind driven by buoyant financial markets. On the world’s wealth map, this small Middle Eastern country has, in recent years, transformed into something of a regional wealth powerhouse.
A special analysis based on raw data from the World’s Billionaires List – whose Israeli section was compiled in partnership with Forbes Israel – places Israel at the very top of the global ranking, among the countries with the highest concentration of billionaires.
Leaving Japan, Korea, and Spain Behind
In global terms, Israel ranks 15th in the world by sheer number of billionaires, overtaking economies and nations that are vastly larger and wealthier by GDP. Indonesia, for example – with roughly 290 million people (30 times Israel’s population) – has just 33 billionaires. Turkey, a $1.6 trillion economy (more than double Israel’s) with 86 million residents, counts only 40 billionaires. The same goes for Mexico, one of the world’s largest economies with a population exceeding 130 million, which produced just 24 billionaires this year – fewer than half the Israeli figure.
Israel’s outperformance is equally striking when compared to more advanced economies. According to the global list published this past April, Spain counted 44 billionaires – the same number as traditional wealth capitals like Switzerland and Japan. Israel even surpasses South Korea, one of the world’s most innovative and advanced nations, which boasts a nearly $2 trillion GDP and a population of more than 50 million, yet currently hosts only 50 billionaires.
Three Israelis Among the World’s 100 Richest
Israel’s dominance also shows at the very top of the global ranking, where three Israeli citizens have broken into the list of the 100 richest people in the world: Miriam Adelson, Idan Ofer, and Eyal Ofer.
Dr. Miriam Adelson retains her title as the richest Israeli in the world, ranked 56th globally with a fortune of $37.5 billion – up $5.4 billion from last year. Adelson controls more than half of Las Vegas Sands, the casino and hospitality empire founded by her late husband, Sheldon. She is also the principal owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks (70% of the team) and the publisher of the Israeli daily newspapers Israel Hayom and Makor Rishon.
Idan Ofer jumped to second place on the Israeli list this year and now ranks 61st globally with a $34.6 billion fortune – the result of a stunning $12 billion wealth accumulation over the past year. The bulk of the leap is tied to his holdings in Quantum Pacific Group, which has emerged as a dominant force in global shipping, anchored by its Singapore-based subsidiary EPS – operator of a fleet of roughly 210 vessels.
Ofer overtook his brother, Eyal Ofer, who sits just behind him at 62nd place with a net worth of $33.6 billion (also up $5.4 billion this year). Eyal heads the UK-based Zodiac Group, which runs a fleet of some 190 ships, and holds extensive real estate assets along with a controlling 21% stake in Israel’s Mizrahi Tefahot Bank.
Rounding out the top five richest Israelis are the tech billionaire brothers Dmitri and Igor Bukhman, Israeli citizens who founded Playrix – one of the world’s largest gaming companies – and together are now worth around $28 billion ($13.6 billion each).
6 of the World’s 15 Richest People Are Jewish
The “Jewish angle” of the list is no less compelling and, alongside the Israeli ranking, underscores just how far creativity, initiative, vision, and sheer ambition can take you. Forbes Israel’s recently published World’s Jewish Billionaires List is topped by Larry Page, Larry Ellison, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Dell, and Steve Ballmer – six Jewish billionaires whose combined net worth exceeds $1.1 trillion, each of them also ranked among the 15 richest people on Earth. Put differently: one out of every three mega-billionaires at the top of the global wealth hierarchy is Jewish. And crucially, not one of them inherited his fortune. Every dollar was earned the hard way, as entrepreneurs who led the digital revolution of our era.
The race for the title of richest Jewish person in the world saw a dramatic reversal this year. Until September 2025, Larry Ellison, founder of software giant Oracle, looked like the runaway winner – and on September 10, he posted what was arguably the single greatest day of wealth accumulation in human history: Oracle’s stock surged 36% on blockbuster cloud revenue guidance, and Ellison added nearly $100 billion to his net worth in a single trading session. But AI giveth and AI taketh away. Concerns over an “AI bubble” sent the stock tumbling 50% within months, cutting Ellison’s fortune to $190 billion – relegating him to just third place on the Jewish billionaires list.
The biggest winner was Larry Page, cofounder of Google, whose parent company Alphabet crossed the $4 trillion market-cap threshold in early 2026 (only Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft had done so before it). Page is now valued at $257 billion, while his partner Sergey Brin added billions of his own, overtaking Jeff Bezos to become the third-richest person in the world at $237 billion.
Musk on the Road to a Trillion
At the very summit of global wealth sits Elon Musk – and even he shattered his own records this year. Worth $342 billion a year ago, Musk became the first person in history to cross the $500 billion mark in October 2025, and by December 19 he had already blown past $700 billion.
In the past 12 months alone, he added $497 billion(!) to his fortune – more than triple the total wealth of the world’s No. 2, Larry Page. Put another way: in the last year alone, Elon Musk accumulated more wealth than any other human being has amassed over an entire lifetime. With a net worth of $839 billion, he is closer than ever to claiming the title of the first trillionaire in history.
This extraordinary growth has reshaped the upper tier of the ultra-wealthy in a striking way: a record 20 people are now centibillionaires (with net worths above $100 billion each), compared to just one person holding that title six years ago. Together, they control 20% of the total wealth of all billionaires on the list.
Fifteen of the world’s 20 richest people are American – and the United States continues to dominate the global billionaire map by a wide margin, with no fewer than 989 billionaires (nearly 30% of the list). China is a distant second with 539 billionaires, followed by India with a record 229. Germany (212 billionaires) and Russia (147 billionaires) round out the top five countries with the highest billionaire populations in the world.
