The UAE was home to 52 billionaires in 2025, according to Altrata’s Billionaire Census 2026, published on 27 August 2026. Together, UAE billionaires held a combined net worth of $201 billion — roughly AED 738 billion at the dirham’s fixed peg to the dollar — placing the country 15th in the world by billionaire population and inside the global top 15 billionaire markets.
The more interesting number sits one level down. Dubai alone accounted for 43 of those 52, enough to put the emirate joint eighth among the world’s cities by resident billionaire population, level with Shenzhen. Dubai added two billionaires over the year. The country as a whole moved the other way: its billionaire population declined 1.9 per cent, even as the global count rose to an all-time high.
Key takeaways
- The UAE had 52 billionaires worth a combined $201 billion in 2025, ranking 15th globally by billionaire population, according to Altrata’s Billionaire Census 2026.
- Dubai was home to 43 billionaires, two more than the previous year, tying with Shenzhen for eighth place among the world’s cities.
- Saudi Arabia had more billionaires than the UAE — 59 — but their combined wealth was lower, at $175 billion.
- Middle East billionaire wealth fell 4 per cent to $700 billion in 2025, even though the region’s billionaire population grew 5 per cent to 254 people.
UAE Billionaires by the Numbers
Altrata counted 3,795 billionaires worldwide in 2025, holding $15.1 trillion between them. Against that backdrop, the UAE’s share is small but not trivial: about 1.4 per cent of the world’s billionaires and roughly 1.3 per cent of global billionaire wealth.
Those two percentages are worth reading together. The UAE holds a slightly smaller share of the money than it does of the people — a sign that the country’s billionaire class is broad rather than top-heavy, with no single fortune of the scale that distorts the rankings in the United States or China.
How the UAE ranks globally
Fifteenth place puts the UAE in the company of established wealth economies many times its population. It also puts the country in an unusual position for 2025: the global billionaire population grew 8.2 per cent that year, its strongest annual expansion in five years, capping a decade in which the billionaire class expanded by almost 60 per cent. The UAE’s count shrank.
That divergence is the story the headline number hides, and it is dealt with below.
How it compares with Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia ranked one place ahead of the UAE, with 59 billionaires. But their combined wealth was $175 billion, against the UAE’s $201 billion — so on Altrata’s own figures, UAE billionaires are on average considerably wealthier than their Saudi counterparts.
| Measure (2025) | UAE | Saudi Arabia | Global |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billionaires | 52 | 59 | 3,795 |
| Combined Wealth | $201 billion | $175 billion | $15.1 trillion |
| Average per Billionaire | ≈ $3.9 billion | ≈ $3.0 billion | ≈ $4.0 billion |
| Rank by Population | 15th | One place above UAE | — |
| YoY Population Change | −1.9% | Not published | +8.2% |
Source: Altrata, Billionaire Census 2026. Averages calculated by DubaiPress from published totals.
Dubai Enters the World’s Top 10 Billionaire Cities
Dubai billionaires numbered 43 in 2025, up from 41 a year earlier — a gain of two that was enough to move the emirate into joint eighth place globally, tied with Shenzhen.
Altrata attributes the concentration of billionaires in a handful of cities to access to entrepreneurial networks, financial services and high-end lifestyle infrastructure. Dubai has spent two decades building all three deliberately, and the ranking is the clearest external confirmation yet that the strategy is registering in global wealth data rather than only in local marketing.
The cities ahead of Dubai
Seven cities finished above the emirate: New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, London, Singapore, Los Angeles and Beijing. Every one of them is either a national capital-markets centre or a technology cluster with decades of listed-company wealth behind it. Dubai is the only Middle Eastern city in the group.
The report also found that one in five billionaires globally was born outside the country where they now live and run their main business — with the share reaching about 60 per cent in London, 41 per cent in San Francisco and 19 per cent in New York. Altrata did not publish a figure for Dubai, but the mobility trend it describes is precisely the one the emirate has been designed to capture.
Why Billionaire Numbers Fell While Dubai’s Rose
The two headline figures appear to contradict each other. They do not, but the reconciliation is uncomfortable.
Working backwards from the published 1.9 per cent decline, the UAE had roughly 53 billionaires in 2024 and 52 in 2025. Dubai went from 41 to 43. That arithmetic implies the rest of the country — Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and the northern emirates combined — lost around three billionaires over the same period. Altrata does not break the figures out this way, and the inference should be treated as such.
Two caveats matter before anyone reads a trend into it. First, at a population this small, a single valuation swing moves the national number by two percentage points. Altrata’s own analysis of an earlier census found that in each of the preceding three years, an average of one in ten people worth between $1 billion and $2 billion dropped below the threshold. Second, the census locates individuals by their primary business address, not their passport or their home — so a founder restructuring a holding company can migrate between countries in the data without moving at all.
What Is Driving Wealth Into the Gulf
The regional picture is one of more billionaires holding less money.
Diversification and sovereign infrastructure
Altrata credits non-oil diversification and large sovereign infrastructure programmes with driving capital inflows and new wealth creation across the Gulf, singling out Saudi Arabia and the UAE. In practice that means the free zones, the exchanges, the family-office regime and the professional-services layer built around Dubai’s financial centre, DIFC, rather than hydrocarbons.
It is the same argument DubaiPress examined in its analysis of whether Dubai’s economy is genuinely fragile, and the census provides an outside data point in its favour: the capital arriving is showing up in resident wealth counts, not only in project announcements.
Why regional wealth fell while population grew
Across the Middle East, the billionaire population rose 5 per cent to 254 people. Their combined wealth fell 4 per cent, to $700 billion.
The report attributes the gap to weaker energy prices and underperforming regional equity markets. Oil closed 2025 almost 20 per cent lower — its largest annual decline since 2020. Where fortunes are anchored in energy exposure and locally listed equities, the count can rise while the valuations fall.
The AI Effect on Global Billionaire Wealth
Globally, the census points to one dominant driver. Of the 150 listed companies that contribute most to billionaire wealth, those making meaningful artificial-intelligence investments saw their market valuations climb 23 per cent faster over 2024–25 than those that did not.
The effect is concentrating wealth at the very top. The world’s 29 “superbillionaires” — those worth more than $50 billion — held 27.2 per cent of all billionaire wealth in 2025, against 7.2 per cent in 2017, when only ten people qualified. Altrata notes that a threshold was crossed in mid-2026, when Elon Musk briefly became the world’s first trillionaire following the public listing of SpaceX.
The report does not break out how exposed UAE billionaires are to this trend, which is a real gap in the local picture. What is visible from here is the cost side: the same investment surge is pushing up prices across the wider economy, including in the UAE.
What This Means for the UAE Economy
For residents, a billionaire count is a proxy, not a paycheque. What it tracks is where globally mobile capital chooses to base itself — and that choice has downstream effects on hiring in financial and professional services, on demand at the top of the property market, and on the depth of the private-capital pool available to founders raising money locally, an environment DubaiPress covered in its guide to investment opportunities in Dubai for 2026.
Three things are worth watching. Whether the non-Dubai emirates recover the billionaires the arithmetic suggests they lost. Whether regional wealth recovers if energy prices and Gulf equities stabilise. And whether any UAE-based fortunes appear in next year’s AI-linked cohort, where global growth now sits.
What is not yet known is how UAE billionaire wealth moved year on year. Altrata published the population change but not the corresponding wealth change for the country, so the $201 billion figure cannot yet be read as a rise or a fall.
The next comparable data point is the Billionaire Census 2027, due around August next year. Until then, Altrata’s announcement of the report sets out the fuller methodology and global tables.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many billionaires in UAE are there in 2026?
The most recent count is 52. Altrata's Billionaire Census 2026, published in August 2026, recorded 52 billionaires resident in the UAE during 2025, with a combined net worth of $201 billion.
How many Dubai billionaires are there?
Dubai was home to 43 billionaires in 2025, two more than the year before.
Where does Dubai rank among billionaire cities?
Joint eighth in the world, tied with Shenzhen, behind New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, London, Singapore, Los Angeles and Beijing.
Does the UAE or Saudi Arabia have more billionaires?
Saudi Arabia has more people on the list — 59 against 52 — but UAE billionaires hold more wealth in total, $201 billion against $175 billion.
Why did the UAE's billionaire count fall?
The population declined 1.9 per cent year on year. Altrata does not give a country-level explanation, but regionally it points to weaker energy prices and softer Gulf equity markets. At this sample size, a handful of valuation moves across the $1 billion line is enough to change the total.