The Manhattan 100 2026
Our assessment of influence across New York business and civic life, published with its criteria first.
Methodology
We measure the capacity to affect outcomes: decisions that allocate capital, shape policy, determine what gets built, or set terms that others must work within. That is not the same as visibility, and prominence generated through publicity is not a qualification.
We assess the scale of the decisions a person can make or block, how many people and institutions are affected, whether the influence is durable or attached to a single transaction, and whether it is exercised on New York specifically.
Every factual claim in an entry is recorded against a source we can point to. We publish no estimated net worth, no estimated revenue and no figure we have constructed ourselves. Subjects are contacted before publication and their response is recorded.
We order in bands rather than to the individual place, because ranking a hundred people precisely implies a resolution the evidence does not support.
No place on this list is available for purchase. Selection is handled by editors, and nobody involved in selling advertising or paid features has any role in it.
We publish the criteria before the list.
The methodology above is the standard this list will be held to. Entries name real people, and every claim in one is checked against a source we can point to, so they are published when that work is done rather than to fill a page. Our reasoning is set out in the Power List section, including what rankings get wrong and how to be considered.