Britain has a strange problem. It is losing millionaires faster than any other country, and at the same time it is closing the door on the skilled workers who might one day replace the tax they paid. The story of millionaires leaving the UK is usually told as a tale of tax flight. The numbers behind it are messier, and the second half of the story, who is still arriving, gets almost no attention.
Net migration to the UK nearly halved in 2025, and the fall was driven by fewer people coming to work, not by the wealthy packing up. This article sets out what the data actually shows: how many millionaires have left, where they went, how reliable the headline figure is, and how hard it has become for an ordinary skilled worker to get in.
How many millionaires have left the UK?
The most quoted figure comes from Henley & Partners, the residence-by-investment firm whose annual Private Wealth Migration Report tracks the movements of people with liquid investable wealth of at least $1 million. Its 2025 report, published on 24 June 2025, projected that the UK would lose a net 16,500 millionaires during 2025.
That was the largest projected net outflow for any country since Henley began tracking millionaire migration a decade earlier, and more than double the 7,800 net departures it expected from China, which had topped the table every year before. All of these are 2025 figures, and all are projections rather than counts.
The trend had been building. Henley’s data put the UK’s net loss at 4,200 millionaires in 2023 and 10,800 in 2024, before the projected 16,500 for 2025. Globally, the firm expected 142,000 millionaires to relocate across borders in 2025, with a further rise to 165,000 pencilled in for 2026.
Two points of caution before going further. Henley has not published a 2026 figure for the UK, or for anyone else, and we explain why below. And a “millionaire” in this data is defined by investable assets, so it excludes people whose wealth is tied up in a house or a business.
Why are millionaires leaving the UK?
The simplest answer is tax, and specifically the end of the non-dom regime. From April 2025 the UK abolished the remittance basis that had let foreign-domiciled residents keep offshore income and gains outside the UK tax net. We have covered the mechanics in our guide to non-dom tax and in our explainer on what changed in April 2025.
The non-dom change did not arrive alone. Inheritance tax was extended to the worldwide assets of long-term residents. Capital gains tax rates rose, and property taxes on second homes and high-value purchases were tightened. For a globally mobile family, each change on its own might have been absorbed. Together, they changed the calculation.
Henley’s own client data points the same way. Its 2026 report, published on 16 June 2026, says applications from people with a UK address rose 15% between 2024 and 2025. More striking is who is applying. In the first five months of 2026, non-UK nationals accounted for 53% of applications from a UK address, up from 44% in 2025. In other words, the people most likely to leave are the internationally mobile residents the non-dom regime was designed to attract in the first place.
The same report notes that 36% of applications from British nationals came from people already living outside the UK. Some of the exodus, it seems, happened quietly some time ago.
Is the millionaire exodus overstated?
Probably, at least in the way it is usually reported. Three arguments deserve a hearing.
First, scale. The Tax Justice Network, which campaigns for higher taxes on wealth, responded to the 2025 report on the day it was published. Its calculation was that the 16,500 figure “represent just 0.63% of the UK’s millionaire population”. Whether 0.63% a year counts as an exodus is a matter of language rather than arithmetic, but it is a long way from the emptying of Mayfair that some coverage implied.
Second, the source itself has changed its approach. Henley’s 2026 edition dropped the country-by-country migration counts entirely. In place of inflow and outflow numbers it introduced a Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score, and its methodology essay is candid about why: the report now focuses on what can be measured rigorously “rather than producing a precise count of movements that the data does not yet support”. The firm notes there is no agreed international definition of a high-net-worth individual, and that wealthy people routinely hold residence rights in several countries at once, which makes a clean count of “movers” close to impossible.
Third, the academic evidence on tax-driven flight is thinner than the headlines suggest. Henley’s methodology essay cites a detailed study of UK non-dom taxpayers which found that a significant reform cutting their net-of-tax returns produced a departure rate of under 5% among those affected. That is a real response, but it is a minority one.
Our reading is that the direction is real and the size is contested. Wealthy, mobile residents are leaving Britain in larger numbers than before, and the policy triggers are not hard to identify. But the most-quoted number was a projection from a firm that sells relocation services, it has since been retired by its own authors, and nobody has replaced it with a verified count.
Where are UK millionaires moving?
Henley’s 2025 report gave projected net inflows by destination. These are the last country-level figures the firm published, and they are for 2025.
| Destination | Projected net millionaire inflow, 2025 |
|---|---|
| United Arab Emirates | +9,800 |
| United States | +7,500 |
| Italy | +3,600 |
| Switzerland | +3,000 |
| Saudi Arabia | +2,400 |
| Portugal | +1,400 |
| Greece | +1,200 |
The UAE’s lead is no surprise to anyone who has looked at Dubai tax residency or the Dubai golden visa: no personal income tax, a long-term residence permit for investors, and a time zone that works for London money. Italy’s appeal rests on its flat tax for new residents, which rose to €300,000 a year from 1 January 2026 with, according to Henley, little dent in demand; our guide to the Italy flat tax regime has the detail. Greece remains the cheapest route into the EU for a property buyer, as our Greece golden visa guide explains.
For 2026, Henley publishes scores rather than flows. Its Wealth Mobility Competitiveness Score, released in June 2026, puts the UAE first on 85.3 out of 100, followed by Singapore (79.5), New Zealand (75.8), Italy (72.3), Switzerland (70.8) and Greece (70.5). These measure how attractive a jurisdiction’s tax, residence and institutional offer is to mobile wealth. They are not counts of people moving, and Henley says they should not be read as migration forecasts.
Who is still moving to the UK?
Far fewer people than two years ago, and far fewer workers in particular. The Office for National Statistics’ provisional estimates for the year ending December 2025, published on 21 May 2026, put net migration at 171,000. That is down 48% from a revised 331,000 the year before.
The components matter. Around 813,000 people arrived for at least a year and 642,000 left. Among non-EU nationals, the number arriving for work-related reasons fell by 47% in 2025, the sharpest drop of any category, as the care worker route closed and salary thresholds rose.
British citizens, meanwhile, were net emigrants. About 246,000 left in the year to December 2025 and about 110,000 returned, a net outflow of roughly 136,000 British nationals. Most of them were not millionaires. The ONS does not publish migration by wealth, so the millionaire story and the migration story cannot be reconciled line by line, but they point the same way: Britain is exporting more of its own residents than it is importing.
The ONS’s next long-term migration release is expected in November 2026, covering the year to June 2026.
How hard is it to get a UK work visa in 2026?
Harder than at any point in recent years. On 22 July 2025 the general salary threshold for a Skilled Worker visa rose from £38,700 to £41,700 a year, according to GOV.UK, and most roles must now sit at graduate level. On the same date the route closed to new overseas applications from care workers and senior care workers.
The employer side of the system is thinner than it looks, too. The Home Office register of licensed sponsors held roughly 127,000 organisations as of the register published on 24 September 2026, but SkilledJobs’ analysis of the Home Office sponsor register found that around 1,000 of them left the register every month between July and September 2026, and that fewer than 3% of licensed employers had advertised a single role in the 30 days to 2 October 2026. Care and hospitality businesses made up the largest share of those leaving. The register does not publish the reason an organisation leaves, so none of this says anything about any individual employer.
Put the two halves together. A wealthy resident can leave on a Tuesday and be tax-resident in Dubai by the end of the quarter. A nurse, a software engineer or a chef who wants to replace the economic activity that resident took with them needs a job offer above £41,700 from one of a shrinking pool of licensed employers that is actually hiring.
What it means for the UK economy
The tax base is narrowing at the top, and the worker pipeline is narrowing underneath it. Even if the true millionaire outflow is a fraction of the headline, the people leaving are disproportionately the ones who paid the most, and the non-dom receipts they generated are not coming back on the same terms. At the other end, a 47% fall in non-EU work arrivals in a single year is not a rounding error for sectors such as social care and hospitality, which also happen to be the sectors losing sponsor licences fastest.
Two dates will tell us whether this is a blip or a trend. The ONS release due in November 2026 will show whether net migration has stabilised or kept falling. And the government’s review of salary requirements for 2026 to 2027 will show whether Westminster wants more skilled workers or fewer. Until then, the honest summary is that the UK has made itself less attractive to the globally mobile at both ends of the income scale at the same time.
Frequently asked questions
Henley & Partners projected a net loss of 16,500 millionaires from the UK in 2025, the largest for any country since it began tracking in 2015 and more than double China’s projected 7,800. The figure is a projection, not a count, and the Tax Justice Network calculated it equals about 0.63% of UK millionaires. Henley has not published a 2026 figure.
The main driver is tax. The non-dom regime was abolished in April 2025, inheritance tax was extended to the worldwide assets of long-term residents, and capital gains and property taxes rose. Henley’s 2026 report says applications from UK addresses rose 15% between 2024 and 2025, with non-UK nationals making up 53% of them in early 2026.
Henley’s 2025 projections put the UAE first with a net inflow of 9,800 millionaires, followed by the United States (7,500), Italy (3,600), Switzerland (3,000), Saudi Arabia (2,400), Portugal (1,400) and Greece (1,200). For 2026 Henley publishes competitiveness scores instead of flows, with the UAE on 85.3 out of 100, then Singapore, New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland and Greece.
Yes. ONS provisional figures for the year ending December 2025, published in May 2026, put net migration at 171,000, down 48% from 331,000 the year before. About 813,000 people arrived and 642,000 left. Non-EU work-related arrivals fell 47%, and British nationals were net emigrants, with around 246,000 leaving and 110,000 arriving.
Harder than before July 2025. The general salary threshold rose to £41,700 on 22 July 2025, most roles must be graduate level, and the care worker route closed to new overseas applicants the same day. The sponsor register held about 127,000 organisations in September 2026, but around 1,000 leave each month and fewer than 3% advertised a role in the 30 days to 2 October 2026.
