Vanity Fair Names Its 2026 New Establishment, and the Machine Age Takes the Head of the Table

Vanity Fair has released the 2026 edition of its New Establishment, its ranking of the people who hold the most sway over money, influence and taste. This year the magazine has organized the whole list around artificial intelligence and presents its honorees as the figures who are setting the course of that new era. The list groups them by temperament as well as by rank, so the dealmakers and the admired appear alongside the dissenters and those who simply ignore the rules. It reads best slowly, the way one reads a seating chart before a long dinner.

With reporting from Vanity Fair.