The very wealthy don't take holidays: they run a calendar. Davos to Monaco, Art Basel to St. Barts: the same yachts, jets and faces, on the same loop, every year. This is that loop, mapped.
62 stops a year, January to December: scroll the calendar below to follow the route.
The calendar
Every stop, in order. Where it happens, who shows up, and the one number that proves the money is in the room.
The Alpine court convenes
January-March· Palm Beach, Florida
America’s gilded winter quarter. From New Year to Easter the East Coast establishment decamps to Worth Avenue and the gala circuit, a charity ball nearly every night, each one a society census.
Season gala tables routinely clear $25-100k; Palm Beach property deals spike every Q1.
Hedge-fund Florida, dynastic American money, the Mar-a-Lago orbit.
Mid-January· Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Southeast Asia’s flagship art fair opens the collecting year. The fair sits literally on top of the region’s private banks, where the art and the wealth management meet in the same tower.
Timed to the January wealth-review season of Asia’s private banks, collectors shop between portfolio meetings.
Southeast Asian family offices, new Singapore residents, regional gallery weight.
Mid-late January· Davos-Klosters, Switzerland
A ski village becomes the densest concentration of capital and power on earth for one week, heads of state on stage, the real deals in hotel suites off the Promenade.
A thousand-plus private-jet movements into Zurich, St. Gallen and Dübendorf in a single week.
CEOs, sovereign-wealth chiefs, central bankers, and the billionaires who lobby them.
Late January· Park City, Utah
Independent film’s marketplace, run out of a ski town. The premieres are the showroom; the eight-figure acquisition bidding between streamers happens in chalets up the mountain.
A single festival hit can sell for $15-25M before the closing weekend.
Streaming-war money, film financiers, talent agencies entertaining buyers.
Late January· Kitzbühel, Austria
The most dangerous downhill in ski racing doubles as the Alps’ loudest society weekend: the Streif by day, the Stanglwirt and Kitz Race Club parties by night.
Kitzbühel hosts more helicopter movements this weekend than the rest of the winter combined.
Austrian and German industrial money, F1 drivers off-season, Alpine society.
Late January· St. Moritz, Switzerland
Polo played on the frozen lake of St. Moritz, ringed by the Engadin old guard, the high mass of the Alpine winter season at its champagne-on-ice peak.
The one weekend the frozen lake outprices the Cresta Run, hospitality tents sell out a year ahead.
European old money, Gulf patrons, the Badrutt’s Palace winter crowd.
Deep winter, quiet money
Early February· Rotating host city, USA
America’s corporate court in session: one game, a week of invite-only parties, and the year’s most concentrated private-aviation traffic jam in whichever city hosts.
Luxury suites trade north of $1-2M; host-city FBOs handle over a thousand extra jets.
Team owners, celebrity capital, Fortune 500 C-suites entertaining clients.
Mid-February· Venice, Italy
The tourists get confetti in the piazza; the circuit gets the private palazzo balls: Il Ballo del Doge and its rivals, costume by appointment, entry by invitation and four figures.
Tickets to the top masked balls run €1,500-3,500 before the costume, which can cost multiples more.
European aristocracy, costume-grade romantics with serious money, fashion patrons.
February Sundays· St. Moritz, Switzerland
Thoroughbreds race across the frozen lake on three February Sundays, including skikjöring, where skiers are towed behind riderless horses. The Engadin season’s grand finale.
A racecourse that exists for three Sundays a year, built on a lake, with champagne tents to match.
The St. Moritz winter colony at full strength before the season closes.
Shrovetide Thursday· Vienna State Opera, Austria
The opera house is stripped of its seats and old Europe dances until dawn. The most formal night on the continent: debutantes, white tie, and boxes that cost like cars.
A box for the night runs to €25,500, and they are inherited more often than bought.
Austrian and German establishment, diplomatic corps, central European industrial dynasties.
Carnival week· Sambadrome, Rio de Janeiro
The world’s biggest party, watched from above: the Sambadrome’s luxury camarote boxes are where Brazilian money, visiting celebrities and the yacht-club set do Carnival air-conditioned.
Top camarote passes run thousands of dollars a night in a country where that is a year’s wage.
Brazilian industrial and agri money, international celebrity guests, South America’s society pages.
Late February· Dubai Harbour, UAE
The Gulf’s yacht market in session at the peak of the desert winter: the region’s buyers shop superyachts at home before the fleet sails for the Mediterranean summer.
The Gulf is the superyacht industry’s fastest-growing buyer base, and this is where those orders start.
Gulf buyers, brokers chasing the region’s fastest-growing order book, shipyard reps.
Late February· Santa Monica, California
The art market’s West Coast week, timed to awards season: collectors, studio money and celebrity buyers in the same tent, with the entertainment industry’s walls to fill.
The one fair where the buyer of a seven-figure painting may also be on a billboard above it.
Hollywood money, tech collectors driving up from Silicon Valley accounts, LA’s museum boards.
The market moves east
Mid-March· MECC, Maastricht
The world’s greatest old-masters and antiquities fair: seven millennia of vetted art under one roof. Quieter than Basel, older money, and the only fair museums shop like clients.
Dealers save museum-grade works all year for TEFAF; insurance value on the floor runs into billions.
Museum acquisition committees, European old-money collectors, the connoisseur tier.
Late March· Salle des Étoiles, Monte Carlo
Monaco’s society season opens with the Princely family’s rose ball, a themed gala under the Salle des Étoiles’ retractable roof that has anchored Riviera society since Grace Kelly.
Tables are allocated, not sold; proximity to the princely table is the Riviera’s status map.
The Grimaldi court, Monaco’s resident billionaires, European royalty.
Late March· HKCEC, Hong Kong
Asia’s flagship art-market week: the fair downstairs, the auctions and mega-gallery dinners upstairs, and half the region’s family offices circling the same fifty lots.
Tens of millions clear in the first VIP hour; insurance values at the convention centre run into the billions.
Asian collector dynasties, mainland new wealth, the global gallery A-list.
Late March· Kai Tak Stadium, Hong Kong
Asia’s great corporate jolly: three days of sevens rugby where the boxes matter more than the rugby, the finance world’s reunion weekend, deliberately back-to-back with Art Basel.
Corporate boxes are the city’s scarcest hospitality asset; banks hold them like seats on an exchange.
Hong Kong banking and trading floors, regional CEOs, the expat money network.
Last Saturday of March· Meydan Racecourse, Dubai
The Gulf season’s grand finale: one night of racing under floodlights at Meydan with the world’s richest purse and a grandstand built like a terminal for the people who own the horses.
A $30.5M card makes it the planet’s richest race night.
Gulf royalty, racing syndicates, Dubai’s resident millionaire class in full plumage.
Green jackets, gilded lagoons
Second week of April· Augusta National, Georgia
The hardest ticket in sport at the most private club in America. The golf is the pretext; the cabins, corporate compounds and quiet membership of Augusta are the point.
Badges resell for $40k+ a week; nearby homes rent for more than their monthly mortgage in four days.
CEOs hosting CEOs, PE partners, the American establishment at ease.
Mid-April· Monte-Carlo Country Club
Clay-court tennis on a cliff over the Mediterranean: the first act of Monaco’s spring, where the principality’s resident tax exiles watch their neighbours play.
Half the top-ten seeds can walk to the tournament from their apartments; it is effectively their home club.
Monaco’s resident athletes and billionaires, Riviera society warming up for May.
Mid-April· Milan, Italy
The week the world’s interiors are decided. Furniture is the cover story; the real traffic is yacht and villa commissions: every superyacht interior studio shows here.
Limited-edition design pieces sell like art: six figures for a cabinet, made in eight.
Design-collecting wealth, yacht owners specifying refits, the luxury-brand creative class.
Late April· Giardini & Arsenale, Venice
The art world’s state occasion. For preview week the lagoon fills with collector yachts and palazzo dinners, and the deals of the next art-market year are seeded here.
Superyachts moor along Riva dei Sette Martiri like a second, floating pavilion.
Museum-board collectors, foundation patrons, the curatorial power circuit.
The Mediterranean ascends
First Saturday of May· Churchill Downs, Louisville
Two minutes of racing, a full weekend of American society: Millionaires Row, seersucker and bourbon money, and the spring’s biggest private-jet lift into one mid-size airport.
Louisville’s airfields park 500+ private jets; Millionaires Row tables are handed down like heirlooms.
Southern old money, coastal new money, the bourbon-and-bloodstock aristocracy.
Early May· Hard Rock Stadium, Miami
F1’s bet on American money, paid off: a paddock full of athletes, rappers and hedge funds, a fake marina with real champagne, and Miami’s new wealth on full display.
Paddock Club and suite packages clear $10-50k a head, and sell out anyway.
Miami’s migrated finance row, US celebrity capital, LATAM money up for the weekend.
First Monday of May· Metropolitan Museum, New York
The night New York society, fashion capital and celebrity merge on one carpeted staircase. Entry is by Anna Wintour’s grace, not by cheque-book, which is what makes it priceless.
Tickets nominally $75k, tables from $350k, and money alone still can’t buy one.
Fashion-house owners, media moguls, the celebrity-industrial complex.
Early May· The Shed, Manhattan
The art market rides the Met Gala’s slipstream: the same week New York fills with fashion and celebrity money, the fair opens downtown and the galleries stage their best spring shows.
Met Gala Monday → Frieze Wednesday: one week, one city, two markets clearing at once.
American contemporary collectors, gala-week visitors with afternoons to fill, advisor armies.
Mid-May· La Croisette, Cannes
Twelve days when film, fashion and finance share one seafront. The Palme is decided in the Palais; everything else (yacht dinners, amfAR, brand empires) is decided offshore.
Charter yachts off the Croisette run €500k+ for the fortnight; amfAR tables clear $100k.
Studio owners, streaming billionaires, luxury-brand patrons, yacht-row regulars.
Last weekend of May· Monte Carlo, Monaco
The crown jewel of the entire circuit. The race is slow by modern F1 standards; nobody cares. Port Hercule becomes the world’s most expensive grandstand and the season’s true summit.
100+ superyachts in Port Hercule; trackside berths for the weekend cost more than the average European home.
Everyone: F1 royalty, actual royalty, and every serious yacht in the Mediterranean.
Enclosures and clearing houses
Mid-June· Ascot, Berkshire
Five days of racing under royal patronage where the dress code is enforced harder than the betting. The Royal Enclosure remains Britain’s most genteel velvet rope.
Royal Enclosure access still requires sponsorship by existing members: money queues, lineage walks in.
The British establishment, Gulf racing dynasties, hedge funds in toppers.
Mid-June· Messe Basel, Switzerland
The mother fair. For one week Basel is the global art market’s clearing house: museum-grade works sell in minutes at First Choice, and the year’s prices are set.
Several billion dollars of art under one roof; eight-figure sales before the public doors open.
Top-100 collectors, museum trustees, every blue-chip gallery on earth.
Late June· Palais des Festivals, Cannes
The advertising Oscars became the media industry’s Davos: tech platforms rent the beach, holding companies rent the yachts, and a year of ad budgets is steered from the Croisette.
Beachfront cabana takeovers run seven figures for the week, paid for from the world’s ad budgets.
Big-tech CMOs and platform chiefs, agency holding-company brass, media owners.
Late June-mid-July· All England Club, London
A fortnight of strawberries, whites and the quietest flex in sport: the Centre Court debenture, a tradable security that happens to come with the best seats in tennis.
Five-year Centre Court debentures have traded above £100k, a literal financial instrument for watching tennis.
The City, international royals, London’s resident global wealth.
High season opens
Early July· Henley-on-Thames, England
Rowing as pretext for the English summer season’s most codified garden party: blazers earned not bought, the Stewards’ Enclosure dress rules unchanged in a century.
Stewards’ Enclosure membership has a waiting list measured in decades.
The British sporting establishment, City grandees, old-school-tie networks at full strength.
July-August· St. Tropez → Monaco
Not an event, a migration. For eight weeks the Riviera is the circuit’s home port: Pampelonne beach clubs by day, Les Caves du Roy by night, Monaco as the harbour of record.
Peak-season charter for a 70m+ yacht: €1M+ per week, before fuel and the beach-club bill.
The entire yachting circuit, in residence.
July-August· East End, Long Island
Wall Street’s summer capital. The trading floors empty on Fridays and reconvene at Southampton benefits and East Hampton dinner parties, and deal flow continues, in linen.
Blade helicopter seats from Manhattan sell out Fridays; summer rentals clear $1M for the season.
New York finance at partner level and above, media money, the charity-benefit complex.
Early July· Paris, France
Fashion’s least commercial week is its most exclusive: couture exists for a global client list of a few thousand women, fitted in salons, never in stores.
A single couture gown runs €100k-1M+; the worldwide client base is smaller than a village.
Couture clients, luxury-conglomerate families, the front-row plutocracy.
Early-mid July· Sun Valley, Idaho
“Summer camp for billionaires.” No press inside, fleeces over $10B net worths, and the media-tech mega-deals of the next decade sketched on lodge napkins.
Friedman Memorial Airport logs hundreds of jet movements for a guest list of ~300.
Tech and media’s ownership class: the people platforms are named after.
Mid-July· Goodwood House, West Sussex
A duke opens his estate and the car world brings everything that matters: F1 teams, hypercar debuts, priceless classics run up the hill in anger. The paddock is the market.
Manufacturers debut million-pound hypercars here before any motor show; the buyers are already on the lawn.
Car-collecting wealth, automotive-dynasty heirs, manufacturers courting their best hundred clients.
Late July-August· Salzburg, Austria
Six weeks of the world’s most serious opera and the alpine society season around it: the European establishment’s cultural high mass, sponsorships negotiated between acts.
Premium premiere tickets approach €500, the cheap part of an evening that includes the dinner after.
German-speaking industrial dynasties, arts-patron billionaires, the boards of everything.
The fleet at anchor
Early August· Isle of Wight, England
The world’s oldest sailing regatta: eight days on the Solent where British yachting’s royal lineage meets the modern raceboat money, with the Royal Yacht Squadron as the inner keep.
The Royal Yacht Squadron remains one of the hardest clubs to enter on earth; fleets are easier to buy.
British maritime old money, racing syndicate owners, the Squadron’s gated membership.
August· Sardinia, Italy
August belongs to Sardinia. The Aga Khan built Porto Cervo as a billionaire’s village, and every August the world’s largest yachts anchor off it to prove the design still works.
The Marina dell’Orso berths the 100m+ class; August mooring fees are the world’s highest.
Gulf royals, Italian industrial dynasties, the gigayacht tier.
Mid-August· Monterey Peninsula, California
The automobile as asset class. Concours lawns at Pebble Beach, $20M Ferraris crossing auction blocks, and collectors who fly their cars in ahead of themselves.
Auction week regularly clears $400M+ in collector cars.
Car-collecting billionaires, marque dynasties, West Coast tech wealth.
Late Aug-early Sep· Lido di Venezia, Italy
The oldest film festival, and the circuit’s most cinematic arrival: water taxis to the Lido, premieres at the Palazzo del Cinema, yachts idling in the lagoon between galas.
Lido suites and lagoon berths book out a year ahead for premiere week.
Studio money, European aristocracy, awards-season kingmakers.
Late Aug-Labor Day· Black Rock Desert, Nevada
Radical self-reliance, catered. The tech ownership class decamps to the playa in air-conditioned “plug-and-play” camps with private chefs: rebellion at $100k a head.
Black Rock City operates its own temporary airstrip (88NV) for the private-plane influx.
Founders, VCs, and everyone who says they go “for the art.”
Lights on in the East
Early September· COEX, Seoul
The art market’s newest Asian beachhead, riding Korea’s chaebol collections and pop-culture wealth: the week Seoul’s galleries, conglomerates and K-content money converge.
Korea built one of Asia’s top art markets in five years; this fair is the proof of stake.
Chaebol family collections, K-entertainment wealth, the Asian gallery circuit post-Hong Kong.
Mid-September· Vieux Port, Cannes
Europe’s biggest on-water boat show opens the autumn yacht-market season: 600+ boats in the Vieux Port, two weeks before Monaco closes the deals upstream.
The season’s order book opens here: Cannes sells the 20-40m class, Monaco sells the rest.
First-time yacht buyers graduating upward, brokers, the production-yacht market en masse.
Late September· Marina Bay, Singapore
F1 under lights, threaded through the skyline of Asia’s wealth-management capital. The week doubles as the region’s unofficial summit for family offices and crypto money.
Paddock Club week coincides with a measurable spike in Singapore’s private-banking meetings.
Asian billionaires, sovereign funds, the Marina Bay Sands penthouse set.
Late September· Port Hercule, Monaco
The superyacht industry’s flagship market: a hundred-plus of the newest big boats for sale in one harbour, shopped by the only few thousand people on earth who can buy them.
€4B+ of yachts on display; a single sale can outweigh the GDP of a small island state.
Yacht owners trading up, shipyard dynasties, brokers on commission percentages of nine-figure hulls.
Late Sep-early Oct· Saint-Tropez, France
The Mediterranean season’s elegant last dance: classic J-Class yachts and modern maxis race the same bay, then raft up in the old port for a week of crews-and-owners parties.
Restoring a classic J-Class to racing condition costs more than building a new superyacht, and they race them.
Classic-yacht owners (the connoisseur tier of yachting wealth), maxi racing syndicates.
The autumn market
Early October· Marina Bay Sands, Singapore
Crypto’s densest wealth gathering, deliberately scheduled against the Grand Prix’s afterglow week: 20,000 delegates on the record, the whale dinners and token deals off it.
Side-event yacht parties outnumber the main-stage sessions; family offices send full delegations.
Crypto founders and funds, market makers, the new-money tier shopping for Singapore residency.
First weekend of October· ParisLongchamp, Paris
Europe’s richest race closes the flat season in the Bois de Boulogne: the continent’s bloodstock empires, Japanese racing money and Gulf owners in one grandstand.
A €5M purse, and the winner’s breeding rights are worth multiples of it.
The global thoroughbred ownership class: Coolmore, Godolphin, Japanese syndicates, the Aga Khan studs.
Mid-October· Regent’s Park, London
The autumn art market opens in two tents in Regent’s Park (contemporary in one, five millennia of art history in the other) with auction evening sales timed to the same week.
Frieze week evening sales at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips routinely add hundreds of millions on top of the fairs.
London’s resident global collectors, American museum boards, the Mayfair gallery axis.
Late October· Grand Palais, Paris
The newest fixture on the circuit and already its most glamorous fair: blue-chip art under the restored glass nave of the Grand Palais, with luxury-conglomerate money on home turf.
Paris has pulled collector traffic from London within two editions; the circuit rerouted in real time.
European collector aristocracy, LVMH-orbit patrons, American collectors making a week of it.
Late Oct-early Nov· Fort Lauderdale, Florida
The largest in-water boat show on earth, in the yachting capital of the Americas: the US market’s answer to Monaco, with sportfish money alongside the superyachts.
$4B+ of boats in the water across seven marinas: the industry’s biggest single marketplace.
American yacht buyers, LATAM owners, the brokerage industry’s entire US bench.
Hammers and night races
First Tuesday of November· Flemington, Melbourne
“The race that stops a nation,” and it fills the Birdcage, Flemington’s invite-only marquee village where Australian corporate money does its society season in one day.
Birdcage marquees cost upward of A$1M to stage, for one day of racing.
Australian corporate and mining wealth, international racing syndicates, the Birdcage celebrity row.
Mid-November· Christie’s & Sotheby’s, New York
The art market’s earnings season. The November evening sales in New York set the public price of the world’s most expensive objects, and of the estates being quietly settled behind them.
$1-2B+ can hammer across a single fortnight of evening sales.
Trophy-lot bidders, estate lawyers, museum patrons with paddles.
Late November· The Strip, Las Vegas
F1’s American spectacle: a night race down the Strip engineered for the high-roller economy, with casino suites repriced like Monaco berths for one weekend.
Paddock-and-suite packages have listed at $1M+ for race weekend.
US tech and casino wealth, Gulf grid-walkers, the new-money F1 boom.
Miami, the desert, the snow
First week of December· Miami Beach Convention Center
The circuit’s loudest stop: the Americas’ biggest art fair wrapped in a city-wide party, where the collector class, crypto wealth and celebrity all buy in public.
Miami’s FBOs hit capacity; the week generates a half-billion-dollar art market and a bigger one in real-estate closings.
American and Latin American collectors, Miami’s migrated hedge-fund row, everyone’s brand sponsor.
Early December· Yas Marina, Abu Dhabi
The F1 championship decided at twilight in a marina built for the purpose, opening the Gulf winter season: the circuit’s centre of gravity shifts to the desert until spring.
Yas Marina’s trackside berths are the only place a yacht gets a view of a championship decider.
Gulf sovereign wealth, team owners, the Dubai-Abu Dhabi resident millionaire corridor.
Mid-December· Courchevel · Gstaad · St. Moritz
The chalets open and the circuit goes uphill: Courchevel 1850’s palace hotels, Gstaad’s discreet old money, St. Moritz glitter: Christmas at altitude before the St. Barts exodus.
Courchevel’s altiport is one of the few places ski lessons begin with a private-jet slot.
European and Gulf wealth wintering; the school-holiday plutocracy.
Dec 20-Jan 3· Aspen, Colorado
America’s alpine answer to Courchevel: for the holiday fortnight Aspen’s small-town airport becomes one of the busiest private-jet fields in the country and the Ajax slopes a deal floor.
Aspen-Pitkin County routinely turns jets away over the holiday peak; landing slots are the scarce asset.
US tech and finance billionaires, the LA contingent, the Aspen Institute donor class.
Dec 26-Jan 2· Gustavia, Saint Barthélemy
The year closes and opens in Gustavia harbour, where the world’s largest yachts raft up gunwale-to-gunwale for a week of villa parties and the famous NYE regatta of egos.
Berths in Gustavia for the week change hands for six figures; the harbour holds several billion dollars of superyacht at once.
Tech founders, hedge-fund principals, oligarch-adjacent yachting royalty.
Off the circuit
Between stops, the wealth lives somewhere, and it's moving. Millionaire flows, tax regimes and golden visas across 41 cities.
Dubai/UAE is the planet's top wealth magnet, pulling a record +9,800 millionaires in 2025 on 0% income tax and UK non-dom flight.
Net millionaire flows, 2024-25 (Henley estimates): net arrivals vs departures per year.
Wealth flowing in
Wealth flowing out