Annual Meeting Davos 2026: A Spirit of Dialogue

By R Anil Kumar

• Against the most complex geopolitical backdrop in decades, the 56th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum served as an essential and leading platform for convening decision-makers for consequential dialogue that enabled progress on the most challenging issues facing the world, today

• Close to 3,000 leaders from across regions, sectors and generations from 130 countries came together, including a record 400 top political leaders, nearly 65 heads of state and government, a majority of G7 leaders, close to 830 of the world’s top CEOs and chairs, and almost 80 leading unicorns and technology pioneers

• Participants exchanged insights on peace, security, technology, growth, investing in people and building prosperity within planetary boundaries

Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 23 January 2026. The 56^th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum convened nearly 3,000 leaders from government, business, civil society and academia under the theme “A Spirit of Dialogue”, against the most complex geopolitical backdrop in decades. The meeting provided an essential and leading platform for open exchange among leaders. They worked to find areas of agreement on the world’s most pressing challenges, from peace and security to technology, growth, people and the planet.

The meeting welcomed a record 400 top political leaders, including nearly 65 heads of state and government, with a majority of G7 leaders present in Davos. Some 200 sessions and workshops took place, serving as an impartial platform for the exchange of views and ideas and enabling the engagement of a wide range of voices. With a decisively future-oriented approach, the meeting focused on frontier innovation and actionable insights.

“This is a moment of uncertainty, but also possibility; not a moment to retreat, but a moment to engage,” said Børge Brende, President and CEO, World Economic Forum. “The World Economic Forum is not about responding to current events. It is about creating the right conditions that enable us to move forward.”

“We believe economic progress should be shared,” said Larry Fink, Interim Co-Chair, World Economic Forum, and CEO, BlackRock. “We believe prosperity should reach further than it has, and we believe institutions like the World Economic Forum still matter in making that happen.”

“This year, Davos has reached a new level. Not only was it the intended platform for dialogue, but it also marked turning points and drove decisions,” said André Hoffmann, Interim Co-Chair, World Economic Forum, and Vice-Chairman, Roche Holding.

How can we cooperate in a more contested world?

At a time of geopolitical and societal shifts, with geoeconomic confrontation emerging as the top global risk for 2026, long-held assumptions about security and sovereignty are being challenged, all of which point to the need for new mechanisms for collaboration. Building on its 56-year track record and unique legacy in connecting leaders to move the world forward together, the meeting brought participants together to spur dialogue, advance cooperation and rebuild trust on the most contested issues of the day and protracted crises that garner less attention.

The fundamental importance of trust in preserving and deepening cooperation was a consistent theme throughout the week’s conversations. Leaders warned of the dangers of declining trust, both in institutions and in global politics, saying that it erodes the ability to respond to shared challenges, from inequality and conflict to the climate crisis. Participants highlighted that, despite some challenging headwinds, fresh bright spots of regional cooperation continue to emerge, echoing the findings of the Global Cooperation Barometer 2026. They reiterated that effective communication and dialogue remain the only true way to rebuild trust at global, regional and local levels.

Finding that the volatile and uncertain landscape has profound implications for how industry should approach business strategy, a Forum report highlighted the need for companies to build geopolitical foresight, or “muscles”, directly into their operating models.

Experts assessed the direction of US–China relations in the wake of the November trade deal, weighing its implications for global economic stability and geopolitical competition between the world’s two largest economies. Another session identified urgent measures to bolster financial-sector resilience in the West Bank and Gaza amid economic pressures. Religious leaders examined how interfaith engagement could contribute to stabilisation efforts in Gaza and inform peacebuilding approaches in other conflict-affected contexts, in line with the Gaza Peace Plan.

“But opportunities that are bigger and grander than ever before in human history are right before us,” said Donald J. Trump, President of the United States.

“[We need] dialogue with our friends and partners and also, if necessary, with our adversaries,” said Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. “The world has changed permanently and we need to change with it too,” she said.

“The right approach should be, and can only be, to find solutions together through dialogue and steer economic globalization in the correct direction,” said He Lifeng, Vice-Premier of the People’s Republic of China.

“Society, science, economics and politics must work together hand in hand, in a spirit of partnership,” said Guy Parmelin, President of the Swiss Confederation 2026.

“Geoeconomics is the new geopolitics. In this new era, we need much more dialogue, imagination and entrepreneurship to regain forward momentum,” said Mirek Dušek, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.

“At a time of increased fragmentation, dialogue has become a strategic capability. It is what allows trust, cooperation and progress to survive in a more contested world,” said Maroun Kairouz, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.

“The only way to achieve peace, stability and development in a sustainable fashion requires international dialogue and cooperation,” said Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, President of Egypt.

“We can shape the future,” said Friedrich Merz, Federal Chancellor of Germany. “To succeed, we must face harsh realities and chart our course with clear-eyed realism,” he said.

How can we unlock new sources of growth?

The Forum’s latest Chief Economists’ Outlook offered a real-time snapshot of the global economic sentiment for the year ahead, noting the economy’s relative resilience amid turbulence and guiding leaders through uncertainty around asset valuations, sovereign debt crises, and the economy-wide roll-out of artificial intelligence (AI). In addition, the Leaders for European Growth and Competitiveness community gathered to align on concrete actions to overcome fragmentation, deepen market integration and scale investment. Informal dialogue with the European Commission president explored strategies for maintaining economic security and growth amid geopolitical pressures.

AI and the infrastructure that delivers it were core to public and private sector growth plans. Technology leaders outlined rapid advances, while discussions focused on widening access so people and businesses in both advanced and developing economies share in growth.

Five Nobel laureates in economics presented their latest research and insights on the global economy. Leaders also cautioned against deepening fractures in the global trade system, particularly between some of the world’s largest economies, emphasizing the mutual benefits of international trade.

Complementing the Annual Meeting, a series of regional events each year further foster dialogue, trust and multistakeholder collaboration, advancing global priorities through region-specific action. Over the next 18 months, the Forum will host new events with the governments of Türkiye, Egypt and Panama, among others. The Global Collaboration and Growth Meeting will be held in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on 22-23 April 2026. In collaboration with the Government of South Africa, the Forum also announced a high-level event in spring 2027, providing a platform for dialogue in Africa and reinforcing the central role of emerging and developing economies in global solution-building.

“Understanding how the world works, having appreciation for other cultures, understanding connections and being able to appreciate the ways we connect, whether it’s through technology, trade, investment, culture can enrich our lives and help solve problems,” said Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada.

“The development of AI, the gain of productivity that we hope for, is difficult to reconcile with fragmentation in terms of standards, licensing and access,” said Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank. “I would contend that this can only be remedied by a degree of cooperation,” she said.

“As growth and innovation happen, some firms, jobs and tasks decline as new ones emerge, a process known as creative destruction,” said Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director, World Economic Forum. “This is a leadership moment to ensure that societies are prepared for navigating these transformations,” she said.

“I think what government should be focused more on is policy conducive to growth,” said Jamie Dimon, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, JPMorganChase.

“Despite all the uncertainties that we talk about, trade has been largely resilient,” said Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization.

How can we better invest in people?

Against a challenging economic and social backdrop and through rapid technological advancement, improving the resilience of workforces is vital. This suggests a focus on improving and increasing reskilling, upskilling, job creation and workforce preparedness. Widening access to credit should be prioritized, leaders said, to encourage entrepreneurship.

The Forum announced major global commitments to its Reskilling Revolution initiative, which is now on track to reach more than 850 million people worldwide, nearing its target of equipping one billion people with better access to skills, education and economic opportunities. In parallel, India launched a new national Skills Accelerator, aiming to rapidly scale industry-aligned training and improve employability for millions of workers. Leading technology companies pledged to collectively support 20 million workers by 2030 through the World Economic Forum’s Communications and Technology Industry Community Pledge.

Leaders also emphasized the importance of ensuring education stays relevant for the jobs of the future, including encouraging vocational professions, pointing to the growing opportunity they represent as technology advances. A new initiative, SmartStart USA, was launched to prepare 1 million young people for future-ready manufacturing and supply chain jobs by 2035.

The report Transforming Capital for the Next Era: Gender Parity and the Expansion of the Investable Frontier shows how converting rising female wealth ownership into allocator power can expand deal flow, broaden the range of businesses that scale and support more resilient market performance. The Forum also launched the Women’s Health Investment Outlook, which called for stronger evidence and transparency to unlock investment in women’s health, offering an opportunity to improve the quality of life for women worldwide.

The Youth Pulse 2026: Insights from the Next Generation for a Changing World underscores the priorities of young leaders in the Global Shapers Community, drawing on one of the most diverse datasets capturing next-generation trends on society, politics, the economy, technology and the environment.

“[AI] is a tsunami hitting the labour market and, even in the best prepared countries, I don’t think we are prepared enough,” said Kristalina Georgieva, Managing-Director, International Monetary Fund.

“We’re knocking on the door of these incredible capabilities,” said Dario Amodei, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, Anthropic. “I think in the next few years we’re going to be dealing with how we keep these systems under control, that are highly autonomous and smarter than any human,” he said.

“The way of really making people safe and comfortable and co-exist nicely with AI is to use more AI and also get them adapted to it quickly,” said Eric Xing, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.

“Innovation has to be matched with delivery capacity,” said Sania Nishtar, Chief Executive Officer, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. “The challenge is, if you do not have that delivery capability, if you do not have sustainable financing, you’re unable to use innovation for the impact that they’re intended to have,” she said.

“AI is entering into the health system, but not just into the health system. It’s all the way down to the level of the patient,” said Bill Gates, Chair and Board Member, Gates Foundation.

“The human edge is really what we have to focus on,” said Jonas Prising, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, ManpowerGroup. “That’s where policy-makers and distribution policies are so important,” he said.

How can we deploy innovation at scale and responsibly?

AI and emerging technologies are fundamentally transforming every industry sector and the global labour market, driving profound changes in skill requirements and entire professions across both advanced and emerging economies. CEOs across regions highlighted practical strategies for deploying AI on complex, mission-critical tasks and for driving long-term transformation, looking at actionable insights on how to redesign capabilities, decision-making and operating models to unlock AI’s full enterprise value.

When proven technology like AI links with emerging fields like quantum computing or synthetic

biology, ideas move from lab to market faster, influencing how industries grow and unlocking

new ways of improving the world around us. A new Forum report, Proof Over Promise: Insights on Real-World AI Adoption from 2025 MINDS (Meaningful, Intelligent, Novel, Deployable Solutions), examined how leading organizations are closing the gap between AI ambition and real-world execution. The Forum also announced a new MINDS cohort, highlighting 20 pioneering organizations demonstrating how AI is driving measurable gains in productivity, resilience and competitiveness across industries and society.

The responsible and fair use of such technologies as AI was a core theme, with participants from the public and private sectors emphasizing balancing the potential of these tools with their potential pitfalls. Leaders in the field encouraged their peers to draw on lessons from history for insights on how to manage the rollout of AI. The Global Framework for Innovative and Trusted Digital Embassies, developed in collaboration with public and private sector stakeholders, will enable economies with limited domestic capacity to access sovereign AI infrastructure, secure data storage and compute. A Forum report on Latin America in the Intelligent Age: a New Path for Growth highlighted how the region can boost growth and address long-standing societal challenges with AI and other frontier technologies.

The Forum welcomed five new centres in the United Kingdom, France, the United Arab Emirates and India to be part of the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network, strengthening global collaboration on AI, energy systems, agriculture innovation and cybersecurity.

To meet the energy needs of tomorrow, technology must be scaled up, grids upgraded and access to innovation developed. A new report on clean fuel suggests global clean fuel investment could rise from ~$25 billion today to over $100 billion annually by 2030, driven by new demand and government ambitions.

The Forum welcomed 23 new industrial sites to its Global Lighthouse Network, demonstrating how advanced technologies can improve productivity, resilience, sustainability, talent and customer-centricity at scale. A related report on the Global Lighthouse Network: Rewiring Operations for Resilience and Impact at Scale provides a strategic analysis of the industry transformations achieved by the latest Lighthouse sites, offering a blueprint for scaling frontier technologies to improve operational performance. The Forum also launched Lumina, an AI-powered intelligence platform that consolidates insights from over 1,000 successful industrial transformations across 32 countries and 35 industries. The Forum, together with the governments of Ho Chi Minh City, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, agreed to national deployments of the Lighthouse Operating System, a strategic, scalable and replicable blueprint for manufacturing and supply chain transformation.

While technology is a driver of progress, it can also come with risks, as highlighted in the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026, which shows how AI, geopolitical fragmentation and a surge in cyber-enabled fraud are redefining the global cyber risk landscape at unprecedented speed.

“As cyber fraud becomes systemic, the response must be systemic too,” said Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, World Economic Forum. “This will require coordinated collaboration on a global scale, bringing governments, industry leaders and civil society together.”

“I would advocate for the developing countries: build your infrastructure, get engaged in AI and recognize that AI is likely to close the technology divide,” said Jensen Huang, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer, Nvidia.

“Right now, the Zeitgeist is a little bit about the admiration for AI in its abstract form or as a technology,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “But, I think we as a global community have to get to a point where we’re using this to do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries.”

“It’s better for your quality of life to be an optimist who’s wrong than a pessimist who’s right,” said Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla; Chief Engineer, SpaceX; CTO, xAI.

“The capability overhang [of AI] is massive,” said Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer, Open AI OpCo. “Even if models [did not improve at all] from today, there is still so much productivity to be had just with what’s in people’s hands.”

“We need alignment on key issues,” said Daniel Noboa Azín, President of Ecuador. “We need to fight the right fight, together,” he said.

“If you look at technologies, it’s all about inflection points,” said Arthur Mensch, Co-Founder and CEO, Mistral AI. “The question is whether Europe is ready to use these opportunities to catch up.”

How can we build prosperity within planetary boundaries?

Participants shared optimism on the accelerating growth in renewable energy worldwide, stressing the need and opportunity of cooperating to maximize the positive impact and scale of these innovations. They also spoke of the urgency of the climate crisis, warning of the risk of surpassing climate tipping points that could be difficult, or even impossible, to recover from.

A coalition of major manufacturers launched a unified pledge to harmonize sustainability data requests and simplify environmental reporting for their small and medium-sized enterprise suppliers, enabling them to achieve competitiveness and economic growth through decarbonization.

Water affects every sector, economy and person. Starting with the Annual Meeting, 2026 will be an important year for freshwater and ocean ecosystems with new Forum initiatives launched and insights released to support countries and regions in the lead-up to the UN Water Conference and Ocean Impact Summit. A Forum report on Sports for People and Planet examined insights on the key growth opportunities of the sports economy. The meeting saw the launch of the Forest Future Alliance, a new Forum initiative dedicated to taking responsible action for forest landscapes. Brazil joined the Forum’s First Movers Coalition as its 15th government partner.

“Let’s focus on common interests and common challenges. We know what we have to fix: growth, peace, climate,” said Emmanuel Macron, President of France.

“This is not about everyone doing the little thing; this is about all of us joining forces and making change at scale,” said Ramon Laguarta, Chairman and CEO, Pepsi Co. “We need leadership, we need resources, we need accountability and we need discipline to make change at scale.”

“There is an increased understanding in the role that biodiversity, and nature more generally, plays in business decisions and supply chains,” said Kirsten Schuijt, Director-General, WWF International.

“We are seeing global progress on nature and climate wherever ambition is woven into national priorities, and delivered through open, adaptive collaboration,” said Sebastian Buckup, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.

(Source: World Economic Forum-2026 Report)