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The 10 Biggest Companies in the World by Revenue (2026)

Fortune’s 2026 Global 500 puts Amazon first by revenue, but its top ten is a broad company ranking—not a verified list of the world’s biggest conglomerates.
From TheFinanceBase Team3 min to read
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Fortune’s 2026 Global 500 ranks Amazon first, followed by Walmart and State Grid, based on companies’ reported revenue for fiscal years ending on or before March 31, 2026. Its top ten is a ranking of large corporations—not a verified list of the world’s ten biggest conglomerates. Because no consistent conglomerate-only top ten is established by comparable revenue figures, the accurate answer is Fortune’s broader company ranking, with that distinction made clear.

Fortune’s 2026 top 10 companies by revenue

The ranking below follows Fortune’s 2026 Global 500. The edition was announced July 28, 2026, and ranks companies using revenue for their respective fiscal years ending on or before March 31, 2026. The figures are reported as published; the source does not provide the company-level revenue amounts in the ranking details summarized here.

  1. Amazon
  2. Walmart
  3. State Grid
  4. UnitedHealth Group
  5. Saudi Aramco
  6. Apple
  7. McKesson
  8. Alphabet
  9. CVS Health
  10. China National Petroleum

Fortune reported that Amazon took the No. 1 position, ending Walmart’s 12-year run at the top. The ranking is not a measure of profit, market value, assets, or the number of businesses owned. Fortune’s 2026 Global 500 is the source for the list and its methodology.

Why this is not a conglomerate ranking

“Conglomerate” has no single inclusion rule that makes every company in a global revenue list comparable. It may refer to a parent with businesses in substantially different industries, a group of subsidiaries consolidated in financial statements, or a collection of affiliated businesses. Fortune ranks corporations by revenue but does not classify its top ten as conglomerates.

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Several names in the top ten are better understood by their principal lines of business than as conventional diversified conglomerates: the list includes retailers, a utility, health-care companies, an oil producer, and technology companies. A company can operate multiple business lines without meeting a clearly defined conglomerate test. Without consistent criteria and comparable parent-level financial data, labeling these ten as the largest conglomerates would overstate what the ranking establishes.

What Fortune’s revenue measure includes

Fortune uses each company’s total reported revenue for its relevant fiscal year. The period is not necessarily the calendar year 2025: companies have different fiscal year-ends, provided those years ended on or before March 31, 2026. Fortune says companies must publish financial data and report some or all figures to a government agency. It uses figures as published and does not restate the prior year’s amounts to account for accounting changes.

The methodology also adjusts what counts as revenue by sector. It includes consolidated subsidiaries and reported revenue from discontinued operations, but excludes excise taxes. For banks, revenue is gross interest income plus gross noninterest income. For insurers, it includes premiums and annuity income, investment income, realized capital gains or losses, and other income, while excluding deposits. As a result, revenue is useful for comparing reported top-line scale, but it is not a perfectly uniform measure of operating activity across industries. Fortune’s ranking and methodology explain these rules.

How large the Global 500 was in 2025

Across all 500 companies, Fortune reported $43.1 trillion in revenue for 2025, a 3.2% increase from the previous year. The companies employed 70.2 million people and recorded $3.39 trillion in aggregate profit. These are totals for the full Global 500, not just the ten companies listed above. Fortune’s July 28, 2026 announcement provides the edition-wide figures and context.

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Why the edition year matters

“2026” identifies the Fortune ranking edition, not a common fiscal year shared by every company. The 2026 list uses company fiscal years ending by March 31, 2026, and Fortune describes the results as covering fiscal year 2025. In the prior 2025 edition, Berkshire Hathaway ranked tenth; that edition used fiscal years ending on or before March 31, 2025. A company’s rank can therefore change between editions, and the edition label should not be mistaken for the reporting period of every company. Fortune’s Global 500 gives the current ranking context; its 2025 edition shows the earlier placement.

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What a rigorous conglomerate-only list would require

A defensible ranking limited to conglomerates would need a stated definition and consistent financial scope before companies could be ordered. At minimum, the comparison would have to establish:

  • Eligibility: whether a company must operate across unrelated industries, and how much diversification qualifies.
  • Group boundary: whether to count only the reportable parent’s consolidated revenue or add separately reported subsidiaries; intercompany sales must not be double-counted.
  • Period and currency: which fiscal year to use and how revenues reported in different currencies are converted.
  • Evidence: audited annual reports or official filings for each group, rather than estimates mixed with consolidated company totals.

The Fortune top ten supplies a reliable broad-company ranking, but it does not resolve those conglomerate-specific questions. Berkshire Hathaway’s No. 10 position in the 2025 Global 500 illustrates why a company’s appearance in a general revenue list does not by itself establish a category-wide conglomerate ranking.

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