The 2026 edition of the Fortune 500 is out today—which means it’s time to take a look at the latest stats around women leading Fortune 500 businesses.
My colleague Sydney Lake dives into all the details in a new story for Fortune. A record 56 women lead Fortune 500 companies in 2026, 11.2% of the newest ranking of America’s largest businesses by revenue. That’s the highest share in the list’s 72-year history and the fourth consecutive year the figure has cleared double digits.
The share of Fortune 500 companies run by women has trended upward since 2020, when just 7.4% of the list was female-led. But growth was flat at 10.4% in both 2023 and 2024 before ticking up in 2025 and again this year.
That comes even after some notable exits last fall; in the span of weeks, the Fortune 500 lost multiple female CEOs, including SAIC’s Toni Townes-Whitley, Fannie Mae’s Priscilla Almodovar, and Oracle’s Safra Catz. New additions, meanwhile, include CEOs at Newmont, Textron, Murphy USA, and DTE Energy. And this count doesn’t include two incoming CEOs—Karen S. Carter at Dow (who will be one of three Black female CEOs in the Fortune 500) and Heidi O’Neill at Lululemon. Both have been named to their positions, but neither has officially started yet.
