A decade of aggressive wealth accumulation has lifted Dubai higher up the global ranking of affluent cities than any other urban center, a new industry report shows. The emirate’s millionaire base grew by 102 per cent between 2014 and 2024, according to the Henley & Partners World’s Wealthiest Cities Report 2025, a pace that no other city in the survey matched.
That expansion moved Dubai from 21st to 18th among the 50 richest cities worldwide, Al Bayan reported. The emirate now counts 81,200 millionaires, a figure that includes 20 billionaires and 237 centi-millionaires—residents holding investable assets above $100 million.
Analysts behind the study credited the emirate’s trajectory to a regulatory climate built around foreign capital, pointing to the absence of personal income and capital gains taxes and the city’s widening footprint as a financial hub. Residency programs tied to investment, dependable legal structures and rules designed to draw money from abroad were named as core drivers of the trend across the wider country.
The forecast for the coming decade is steeper still. Henley & Partners expects both Dubai and Abu Dhabi to more than double their centi-millionaire populations by 2035, ranking the UAE among the quickest-growing homes for the ultra-wealthy. The firm projected gains exceeding 100 per cent in that bracket for the two emirates alongside a set of rising wealth centers in Asia and Europe.
At the top of the global table, New York held first place with 384,500 millionaires. The San Francisco Bay Area followed at 342,400 and surpassed New York on billionaire count specifically. Tokyo took third ahead of Singapore, and Los Angeles climbed into fifth as London dropped to sixth.
London’s slide reflected a rare contraction: it and Moscow were the only two cities in the top 50 whose millionaire populations shrank over the ten-year window. The report framed the broader picture as one of increasingly mobile fortunes, with wealthy individuals steering toward places that pair investment freedom with legal certainty and lifestyle appeal.
