Even in a turbulent year at the top, 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.
Still, several Fortune 500 CEOs including Oracle’s Safra Catz, Fannie Mae’s Priscilla Almodovar, and Hershey’s Michele Buck exited their corner offices in a span of weeks during the fall. Almodovar’s departure left the Fortune 500 without a Latina CEO for the first time since she took the job in 2022.
Then, SAIC’s Toni Townes-Whitley stepped down in October, briefly narrowing the ranks of Black women running Fortune 500 companies to just one (TIAA’s Thasunda Brown Duckett) until the September 2025 addition of DTE Energy CEO Joi Harris.
Meanwhile, Foot Locker’s Mary Dillon is no longer ranked among Fortune 500 chiefs after the retailer was acquired by Dick’s Sporting Goods in 2025.
Even with all of those exits, the count of female Fortune 500 chiefs kept moving upward because of a steady flow of internal promotions and outside hires. Newmont, Textron, Murphy USA, and DTE Energy all promoted women as CEOs this past year, and more high-profile transitions are set for the rest of 2026.
Dow announced in April COO Karen S. Carter will take over as CEO on July 1, making her the first Black woman to lead a major U.S. chemical company—and bringing the number of Black women running Fortune 500 businesses back up to three. Lululemon named Nike veteran Heidi O’Neill its permanent CEO, with a September start date.
The Fortune 500 ranks the largest U.S. companies by revenue. This year, Amazon snagged the No. 1 spot on the ranking, capping Walmart’s 13-year run. Although there’s a record number of women leading Fortune 500 companies, we don’t get a woman CEO until Elevance Health, ranked No. 18, which is helmed by Gail Boudreaux. She’s led the health insurer (previously known as Anthem) since 2017. Anthem is followed at No. 19 by Sarah London’s Centene, and at No. 23 by Mary Barra’s General Motors.
The internal-promotion pipeline keeps delivering
Glass ceilings continue to break, in part, due to improved internal succession planning.
In the past decade, the majority of women who have risen to a Fortune 500 corner office have done so through internal promotion rather than outside hiring, according to Fortune data. Ulta Beauty’s Kecia Steelman, who joined the company in 2014 and worked her way up through operations roles before being named CEO in January 2025, told Fortune‘s Leadership Next podcast last fall she’s grateful for the long runway.
“Being really grounded and humble with my beginnings, I wouldn’t change that,” she said.
Despite all the churn, Fortune 500 women CEOs are making gains, albeit somewhat slowly.
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.
While there’s much to celebrate in terms of women reaching the corner office, it could still take decades at the current pace to reach gender parity at the top of the world’s largest companies.
