Where Will the Wealth That Buys the Next Yachts Be Found? The Future of Yachting Through the Lens of Branko Milanović
To forecast the direction of yachting, we are accustomed to looking at order books, deliveries, sales and fleet size. But for a market serving the wealthiest segment of the world's population, it may be just as important to begin with an earlier question: where is wealth being created, who owns it and how concentrated is it?
This perspective emerges when we apply to yachting some of the concepts developed by Branko Milanović, an economist best known for his research on the global distribution of income and inequality.
The aim is not to attribute forecasts about the yachting market to Milanović. Rather, it is to use his perspective as an interpretative tool and compare it with yachting data.
The first consequence is to question one of the most widely used indicators in economic forecasting: GDP.
For a mass-market industry, knowing how fast an economy will grow is fundamental. For superyachts, it may matter more who benefits from that growth. Two countries may grow at the same rate, but if the increase in income and wealth is relatively broadly distributed in one and concentrated among the wealthiest in the other, the potential created for the large-yacht market may be very different.
The latest figures make this question particularly timely. According to UBS, global personal wealth rose by 10.8% in US-dollar terms in 2025, nearly one million people joined the ranks of millionaires, and 35.7% of global personal wealth is concentrated in the United States. Together, the US and China account for more than half the total. But UBS also identifies a widening divergence between average and median wealth: wealth growth is not evenly distributed.
A Two-Speed Market?
Yachting, too, is showing anything but uniform dynamics.
At the end of 2025, 6,239 superyachts over 30 metres were in operation. During the same year, 215 new yachts above this threshold were sold, compared with 200 in 2024. The more revealing picture emerges when the market is broken down by size: 98 sales were in the 30–40-metre segment, 64 in the 40–50-metre segment, 16 in the 50–60-metre segment, 18 in the 60–80-metre segment, and 19 involved yachts over 80 metres—a record for the latter category. the-state-of-yachting-2026
The difference is not merely one of size. The State of Yachting 2026 notes that buyers in the 30–40-metre segment are more sensitive to economic uncertainty, while the upper end of the market continues to demonstrate considerable resilience. Looking at the beginning of 2026, the report itself asks whether the industry is once again facing a “market of two speeds”. the-state-of-yachting-2026
Applying Milanović's lens, we can therefore formulate a hypothesis: yachting's sensitivity to the economic cycle may decrease as we move towards the very top of the wealth distribution.
This does not mean that the very wealthy are immune to crises. It means that the ratio between the cost of a yacht and total wealth may become small enough to change the influence of macroeconomic conditions on the purchasing decision.
We might describe this as a possible yachting wealth gradient: greater economic sensitivity in the lower segments and progressively lower responsiveness as yacht size increases.
Counting the Wealthy Is Not Enough
The same perspective suggests caution when using the number of millionaires or UHNWIs as a straightforward indicator of future demand.
A larger population of wealthy individuals certainly means a larger potential market. But there is a crucial step between having enough wealth to buy a yacht and actually buying one: converting wealth into yachting consumption.
Ownership data show just how differently this conversion can occur.
SuperYacht Times knows the nationality of the owners of 4,725 yachts over 30 metres, representing 76% of the operational fleet. An important methodological distinction: the figures refer to owners' nationality, not their place of residence. the-state-of-yachting-2026
US nationals account for 27.6% of these yachts, followed by Turkey at 7%, Greece at 6.2%, Russia at 5.2% and Italy at 4.9%.
But the number of yachts tells only half the story.
The United Arab Emirates accounts for just 3.1% of the yachts but 6.3% of total volume; Saudi Arabia represents only 1.9% of the yachts but 4.6% of volume. the-state-of-yachting-2026
Two distinct phenomena therefore emerge: how much wealth enters yachting, and how much yacht that wealth buys once it does.
Conversion and Intensity
We can attempt to turn this distinction into two experimental indicators.
The first, Wealth-to-Yachting Conversion, would measure how effectively the population wealthy enough to purchase a superyacht in a given country actually becomes yacht owners.
The second, Wealth-to-Yacht Intensity, would measure the intensity of that participation: average yacht size and volume, and representation in the 60-metre-plus and 80-metre-plus segments.
These are not indicators developed by Milanović, but our own application of his distributional perspective to yachting.
The United States appears to represent a high-conversion model, with a very broad ownership base. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, by contrast, display high-intensity characteristics: a smaller share of yachts by number, but a proportionally much larger presence in terms of volume.
This distinction could prove particularly useful in identifying future markets. Growth in a country's very wealthy population does not automatically guarantee growth in yachting. It may simply indicate potential that has not yet been converted.
The Geography of Wealth Is Not Enough
The Russian case illustrates the limits of any automatic relationship between wealth and ownership.
Russia's share of the fleet over 40 metres declined from 9.1% in 2022 to 7.3% at the beginning of 2026 on a comparable basis; under the current statistics for yachts over 30 metres, its share is 5.2%. The report links this decline to the effects of sanctions. the-state-of-yachting-2026
Wealth is therefore a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one.
Sanctions, capital mobility, taxation, regulation, infrastructure, boating culture and the ability to use the asset internationally can profoundly alter the relationship between wealth and yacht ownership.
To forecast future demand, we should therefore overlay at least three geographies: wealth, ownership and usage.
What This Means for the Coming Years
In the short term, over the next 12–24 months, this reading suggests the existence of partially distinct markets.
In the smaller size segments, the cost of capital, inflation, confidence, the relationship between new and pre-owned yachts, and immediate availability are likely to continue to carry greater weight. At the top end, the concentration of very large fortunes, performance of financial and business assets, taxation and geopolitics may be relatively more influential.
The pre-owned market also confirms the need to avoid reading the figures as if they reflected a uniform trend. In 2025, transactions rose to 353, while reductions in asking prices exceeded €1 billion in aggregate. The market is growing, but buyers are also becoming more selective. At the upper end, by contrast, SuperYacht Times reports more positive dynamics, consistent with those observed in new-build yachts over 60 metres. the-state-of-yachting-2026
Over the medium term, three to five years, it will become even more important to understand where new wealthy elites will emerge and what relationship they will have with yachting.
In 2025, UBS recorded almost one million new millionaires, including more than 440,000 in the United States, while also highlighting particularly dynamic growth among those with wealth of between $5 million and $100 million. At the very top, UBS also identified almost 3,000 billionaires worldwide in 2025, including 196 new self-made billionaires, alongside an acceleration in intergenerational wealth transfers.
But counting the wealthy will not be enough. We will need to understand their age, the origins of their fortunes, international mobility, relationship with the sea and, above all, the industry's ability to turn a potential customer first into a user and then into an owner.
Because the real question is not how many wealthy people there will be.
It is how many of them will want a yacht.
Milanović's lens therefore leads to a simple but important conclusion: forecasting the future of yachting requires more than observing how much the global economy will grow. We must look at who captures that growth.
The data already seem to suggest that, as we move towards the top of the wealth distribution, the market may behave differently: greater economic sensitivity in the smaller size segments and greater resilience at the upper end, culminating in the record set by yachts over 80 metres in 2025.
The future of yachting may therefore depend less on average growth in global wealth than on its distribution, concentration, geography and ability to translate into ownership.
Filippo Ceragioli
Sources and References
Branko Milanović — research on the global distribution of income, inequality and contemporary capitalism; Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality, CUNY Graduate Center.
UBS, Global Wealth Report 2026 — used for figures on the growth and distribution of global personal wealth and changes in the millionaire population. The report covers 56 markets representing more than 92% of global wealth.
UBS, Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025 — used for figures on billionaires, the entrepreneurial creation of new fortunes and intergenerational wealth transfer.
SuperYacht Times, The State of Yachting 2026 — source for fleet data, new-build and brokerage sales, size segmentation and owners' nationalities. Figures cited in this article refer to the accompanying report and the SuperYacht Times iQ database. the-state-of-yachting-2026