About the 2026 list of the Most Powerful Women in Business
Now in its 29th year, the Fortune Most Powerful Women list highlights the leaders commanding boardrooms, markets, and industries. And for the first time since 2024, we have a new No. 1.
Citigroup chair and CEO Jane Fraser has ascended to the top spot, five years after she got Citi’s corner office. Fraser broke Wall Street’s glass ceiling when she became the first woman CEO of a major bank in 2021.
Fraser’s rise exemplifies how this list tracks not just who has an impressive title, but what they are doing with it—with hard business metrics to back that up.
Citi’s stock is up more than 90% since her appointment (and almost 80% in the past 12 months, since Fraser came in at No. 3 on our 2025 list). The bank’s profitability is finally in the same ballpark as that of rivals. Today, Fraser is not just breaking glass ceilings—she is executing a turnaround that the rest of Wall Street is watching. (Read more in Claire Zillman’s feature about her.)
The women on this list are leaders at 94 companies with a combined 11.8 million employees and $7.3 trillion in annual revenue. They hold 180 board seats and work across 20 countries and territories. (Behind the U.S., the countries with the highest number of Most Powerful Women listees are China, with nine, and France and the U.K., with six each.)
The tech and finance industries dominate, but women are breaking through in other sectors, too—among them BP’s Meg O’Neill (No. 16), Big Oil’s first female CEO. We chose these executives based on the size and health of their businesses or P&Ls, measured by both 12-month and three-year financial data. Plus, we evaluated their influence, innovation, career trajectories, and efforts to make business better.
Our 2026 list brought some striking trends into focus. The rise of women in AI is undeniable, exemplified by Fidji Simo (No. 28), who has an expansive role at OpenAI as CEO of AGI deployment.
And take a close look at the CFOs on this ranking: Nearly every major player in AI has a female CFO leading its finance operations. These women—from Sarah Friar at OpenAI (No. 90) to Amy Hood at Microsoft (No. 38)—are making spending decisions that will determine the future of their companies, this technology, and even the global economy. Now that’s power. —Emma Hinchliffe