Why the world’s ultra-rich are suddenly fleeing these major countries

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,