The World’s Most Powerful People 2016

There are nearly 7.4 billion humans on planet Earth, but these 20 men and women make the world turn. Forbes’ annual ranking of the World’s Most Powerful People identifies one person out of every 100 million whose actions mean the most.

To compile the list, we considered hundreds of candidates from various walks of life all around the globe, and measured their power along four dimensions. First, we asked whether the candidate has power over lots of people. Next we assessed the financial resources controlled by each person. Then we determined if the candidate is powerful in multiple spheres. Lastly, we made sure that the candidates actively used their power.

To calculate the final rankings, a panel of Forbes editors ranked all of our candidates in each of these four dimensions of power, and those individual rankings were averaged into a composite score. This year’s list comes at a time of rapid and profound change, and represents our best guess about who will matter in the year to come.

Here are the 20 most powerful people in the world.