Today The Sunday Times’ Rich List 2026 was
- The 38th edition of the rankings show the UK’s 350 most affluent individuals and families share combined wealth of £784 billion — a 1.4 per cent rise on last year and a sum equivalent to a quarter of UK GDP.
- There are 157 billionaires — one more than in 2025 but 20 fewer than the peak four years ago. But the list’s entry level has dipped by £10 million to £340 million, another indicator of the sluggish economic environment.
- With Britain’s tax regime regarded as increasingly unattractive to the global super-rich, Warren Stephens is the only billionaire from overseas found to have moved to the UK over the past year.
- This year’s edition has been shaped by an exodus of wealthy individuals leaving the UK in the wake of tax changes unveiled by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor.
- Nearly a third (111) of the UK citizens who appear in the main list of 350 individuals no longer live on the British mainland. At least 15 foreign nationals who appeared in last year’s Rich List have been removed because they now live elsewhere.
In reaction to this, please see comment from Louise Lewis, Partner & Head of Trusts, Estates and Tax at law firm Freeths:
“The changes to the non-dom regime from April 2025 mark a real shift in how internationally mobile individuals are taxed in the UK. For many long-term residents, it means their worldwide income and gains are now fully within scope for the first time.
We’re already seeing people take stock, looking again at how they hold their wealth and, in some cases, whether the UK still works for them compared to other jurisdictions offering more certainty or lighter tax regimes.
There are still planning opportunities, but the window is narrowing. Many individuals have been reviewing their structures ahead of the changes, from bringing forward distributions or asset sales to reassessing offshore trusts. At the same time, globally mobile families are increasingly weighing up relocation, whether short term to benefit from the new four-year regime or longer term.
The broader question is what this means for the UK’s competitiveness. High-net-worth individuals don’t just bring wealth, they drive investment into businesses, property and emerging sectors. If that capital is directed elsewhere, there’s a risk the UK misses out on growth in areas like technology, infrastructure and green investment.
The challenge now is balance, ensuring the system is fair and generates revenue, while still making the UK an attractive place for global talent and investment.”
Daniel Lewin, Tax partner at Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP (Katten) responds:
“Today’s publication of the Sunday Times 2026 Rich List shows that what had widely been predicted when labor finally abolished Britain’s long-standing non-dom tax regime in 2024 actually happened: a significant exodus of the wealthy and very wealthy.
The systematic dismantling of the non-dom regime, ironically started by the Tories, eventually came home to roost. The final straw – or perhaps death knell – for many of the super-rich living in the UK was the imposition of world-wide inheritance tax on non-UK assets after ten years’ residency in the UK. 40 percent tax is a huge amount.
The numbers published in the Times today are painful reading – almost a third of UK citizens who were previously on the list no longer live in the UK or at least don’t have the UK as their main residence. Those at the very top of the list often have homes in multiple jurisdictions so that switching primary residence may have been comparatively painless. The problem actually runs much deeper than the Rich List, it’s the significant number of emerging successful asset managers, entrepreneurs and investors who came to the UK but decided to relocate to places such as Dubai, Zurich and Milan that offer very attractive tax regimes (including no tax in Dubai).
The new FIG regime introduced to ‘replace’ the non-dom regime and exempting non-UK income and gains from UK tax altogether works well, but is limited to four years from arrival – more than enough time for a secondment or stint in the UK, but no match for the loss of non-dom status and certainly not an incentive for foreign families to grow proper roots in the UK.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the Rich List is that it proves that the predictions about wealthy foreigners (and UK nationals) leaving the UK for other shores were not hype; they are reality. That said, not all is bleak – London remains Europe’s financial centre, is a highly attractive city to live in with exceptional culture, restaurants and diversity. Tax is not everything, but while the Government has been promising growth, the evidence points the other way, at least for non-doms.”
Stephen Abletshauser, Private Wealth partner at law firm Spencer West LLP concludes:
“The voting results have been unequivocal ,we have seen an unparalleled exodus of the wealthiest in our society. Other more accommodating countries such as the UAE, Italy and Switzerland and even the US have gained at the UK’s loss. One wonders if a more sensible compromise would have helped the UK drive investment in the country’s tech and services industries and provided a net gain to the country rather than electing to tax on ideological grounds of supposed fairness. Rightly or wrongly, the global economy plays at a higher level than just an individual’s tax residence and the Exchequer will rue this exodus which is rooted not just in a single blundered policy move but in a series of policy changes since the mid-2000s which ever undermined the certainty of our legal system and continually questioned the notion that these mega, global b/millionaires were actually still welcome in the United Kingdom where they could spread their industry and wealth.”
The post The Rich List – Painful reading: Response to Loss of UHNWIs appeared first on USNewsRank.
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