Henley drops its millionaire headcount. The 2026 migration report changes method after years of criticism.

The Henley Private Wealth Migration Report has been the source behind years of “millionaires are fleeing” headlines. The 2026 edition, published this week, reads differently. Henley has stopped publishing a precise count of how many millionaires move between countries, removed its sole named author, and reframed the report around a Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score out of 100 rather than absolute numbers.

The firm’s own language marks the shift. It says it will no longer produce “a precise count of movements that the data does not yet support,” and it describes current millionaire migration as modest.

What actually changed

For several editions, the report’s centre of gravity was a single figure: the net number of dollar-millionaires expected to relocate in a given year, country by country. That number travelled. It drove news coverage and got used in tax arguments as proof that wealthy residents were heading for the exit in large numbers.

The 2026 report moves away from that. Instead of ranking countries by headcount gained or lost, it scores them on how well they compete for mobile wealth. The change is methodological, not cosmetic: a competitiveness index makes a different claim than a migration tally, and it is harder to read as a running scoreboard of winners and losers.

The UK number, restated

The UK case shows why the method matters. An earlier Henley report had millionaire outflows from the UK roughly doubling between 2024 and 2025. The 2026 edition gives a narrower figure: applications for Henley’s own migration services from people with a UK address rose about 15 per cent between 2024 and 2025.

Those are not the same measurement. One is an estimate of how many wealthy people left a country; the other counts enquiries to a single advisory firm. Collapsing the two is part of what got the earlier reports into trouble.

The criticism behind the change

The revision follows sustained challenge to the underlying data. Dan Neidle, who runs the non-profit Tax Policy Associates, has publicly questioned the reliability of the migration figures produced by Henley and its research partner New World Wealth, arguing the collection methods cannot track millionaire movements with the precision the coverage implied. The Tax Justice Network reported that the study dropped both its author and its numbers following accusations about the data.

Henley has not disowned its earlier work, and reasonable people can disagree about how to estimate something as slippery as where the wealthy actually live. The point here is narrower: a dataset that drove a global narrative has been quietly walked back by the people who produce it.

Why an adviser directory cares

We track who advises wealthy families, and advisers act on numbers like these. A migration estimate shapes where a family thinks about moving, which jurisdictions a firm staffs up, and how a tax debate is argued in public. When the headline figure is later softened from “doubling” to “up 15 per cent,” anyone who built a decision on the first version was working from a weaker foundation than they thought.

It is also a clean illustration of why we weight sources the way we do. A figure is only as good as the method behind it and the number of independent sources willing to stand behind it. A single proprietary estimate, however widely quoted, is not the same as a finding several credible sources reach on their own. The Henley revision is a reminder to check which one you are reading before you act on it.

Sources: Henley & Partners — Private Wealth Migration Report 2026; Tax Justice Network; Euronews.