Various lists of the richest families (excluding royal families or autocratic ruling dynasties) are published internationally, by Forbes as well as other business magazines.
There is a distinction between wealth held by identifiable individual billionaires or a "nuclear family" and the wider notion of an extended family or a historical "dynasty," where the wealth of a historically family-owned company or business has become distributed between various branches of descendants,The Scudder Family, John Pitman, Chandrani Ghosh, David Armstrong, The Dynasties, Forbes, 28 February 2002. "The names are famous and often synonymous with great brands, from spaghetti to tires; those who bear them are without question fabulously wealthy. Yet the Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Michelins and 47 other billionaire families don't appear on the Forbes World's Richest People list. Why not? It's a question of degrees. We have tried to distinguish between fortunes that belong to individuals or nuclear families, and those that have been passed down through more than one branch of the family tree and are often shared by dozens of heirs." usually throughout decades, ranging from several individuals to hundreds of offspring.
According to an August 1, 2020 article from Bloomberg, the world's 25 richest families control more than $1.4 trillion (1,400,000,000,000) of wealth. That figure will change dramatically through time. Bloomberg then puts the top 25 combined wealth at $2.9 trillion at the end of 2025. According to this list as of July 26, 2026 only the world’s 12 richest families, each over $100 billion, control approximately $2.5 trillion of wealth, and the top 25 controls $3.4 trillion.
Contemporary rankings
Note: The list includes families who, according to reliable sources, have a combined net worth of 5 billion US dollars and above.