4 takeaways from Davos 2026: New dealsa reckoningdialogue and more questions than answers
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“We actively take on the world as it isnot wait around for the world we wish to be.”
< data-emotion="wef spn4bz">.chakra .wef-spn4bz{transition-property:var(--chakra-transition-property-common);transition-duration:var(--chakra-transition-duration-fast);transition-timing-function:var(--chakra-transition-easing-ease-out);cursor:pointer;text-decoration:none;outline:2px solid transparent;outline-offset:2px;color:inherit;}.chakra .wef-spn4bz:hover,.chakra .wef-spn4bz[data-hover]{text-decoration:underline;}.chakra .wef-spn4bz:focus-visible,.chakra .wef-spn4bz[data-focus-visible]{box-shadow:var(--chakra-shadows-outline);}Gayle Markovitz
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- The World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2026 has wrapped up in DavosSwitzerland.
- A record number of political leaders came together under the overarching theme 'A Spirit of Dialogue'.
- The week exposed the tension between systemic fault lines and geopolitical noise - and raised many urgent questions.
- Here are four takeaways from the 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos.
More than a century agothe Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke in his letters to a young poet urged them to "live the questions now"to embrace uncertainty as the necessary condition for eventual answers.
Oras Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it in Davos this week: “We actively take on the world as it isnot wait around for the world we wish to be.”
Carney was just one of more than 60 heads of state and a record 400+ political leaders and 830 CEOs and Chairs who came to the Magic Mountain under the theme 'A Spirit of Dialogue'.
Davos 2026: Special address by Mark CarneyPrime Minister of Canada
It was a week where the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting facilitated the making of historynot by providing the answersbut by creating the conditions under which deeply polarized actors could begin to live the most consequential questions of our age.
Those questions themselves became sharper and the pathwaysif not yet clearat least visible.
Middle powers found their voicedialogue reasserted itself as necessityand the shape of a new geostrategic dynamic began to emerge.
Here are four ways Davos 2026 clarified what's at stake.
1. New dealsnew dynamics
There was a tense moment on Wednesdaywhen news landed that Air Force One had turned backdelaying US President Donald Trump's arrival in Davos. But his Special Address to a packed Congress Hall was delivered on schedule.
He spoke at length about wanting to see a "strong Europe": "We believe deeply in the bonds we share with Europe as a civilization. I want to see it do great. That's why issues like energytradeimmigration and economic growth must be central concerns to anyone who wants to see a strong and united West."
And he changed his stance on Greenlandsaying "we probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and forcewhere we would befranklyunstoppable... But I won’t do that”.
He acknowledged it was "probably the biggest statement I madebecause people thought I would use force”.
It's clear there's a rupture between the US and Europe and it was a recurrent topic of conversation throughout the weekwith leaders offering differing thoughts on whether it was irreparable.
We might be just at the beginning of a "once-in-century" breakdown of the global ordersaid Gita GopinathHarvard Professor of Economics and the former First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF.
"I think what's long-lasting is the complete breakdown of trust between the US and Europe."
The US-Europe alliance was a critical part of the global economic order - and the fact that it is being ruptured is very consequential.
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"Europe is looking for strategic autonomy. They are figuring out how to rely... on their own internal economytheir own internal security. So there's no going back on thatregardless of how this week goes."
"Nostalgia is part of our human storybut nostalgia will not bring back the old order and playing for time and hoping for things to revert soon will not fix the structural dependencies we have," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
"If this change is permanentthen Europe must change permanently too. It is time to seize this opportunity and build a new independent Europe."
Carney sounded a note of optimism and took the lead on bold statements of middle-power defiance that defined the week.
"We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it... but we believe that from the fracturewe can build something biggerbetterstrongermore just.
"This is not naive multilateralism... It's building coalitions that workissue by issue with partners who share enough common ground to act together."
The middle powers must act together because if we're not at the tablewe're on the menu.
”Speaking on Thursday morningGavin NewsomGovernor of California and a US presidential hopefulsaid transatlantic relations were "dormant not dead".
And the view from China? "Tariffs and trade wars have no winners," said Vice-Premier He Lifeng.
Meanwhilenegotiations were taking placewith the green shoots of new deals sprouting.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced in her Special Address the EU and India were "on the cusp" of an historic free trade agreement with India.
Some call it 'the mother of all deals'. One that would create a market of 2 billion people.
”And the UK's Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she'd secured deals worth more than $2 billion in private investment.
There was a new deal for actor Matt Damon's Water.org charity - he announced the Get Blue initiativewhich partners with corporations to help scale up their work. GapAmazonStarbucks and Ecolab are already on board.
2. A reckoning for humanity
Before the Annual Meeting beganthe Forum published the Global Risks Report 2026. Extreme weather events dropped from second down to fourth place in the ranking this year - not because they are any less urgent a riskbut because geoeconomic fragmentation and societal polarization have become more pressing.
"We live in a world of more frequentexogenous shocks," said Kristalina GeorgievaManaging Director of the IMFand they will "continue to come".
Every yearthe Annual Meeting's penultimate session on Friday is the Global Economic Outlookwhere leaders explain where they see the economy heading in the coming year.
Here Georgieva expounded on her theme of facing facts and accepting how things are: "We need to look at the world as it is changing... We are not in Kansas anymore."
Director-General of the World Trade Organization Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala echoed the viewoffering her advice for business leaders and policymakers amidst uncertainty.
"If I was running a countryI would be trying to strengthen myself and my region and build resilience... Maybe we'll have a slightly steadier state for the futurebut I don't believe we're going back."
We live in a world of noise - and as speakers proved throughout the sessionsthe noise exists from the macro level right down to the individual.
In the business of solving global problemscrises accelerate when you're putting out fires.
Christine Lagarde warned that "we are heading for real trouble" if we don't pay attention to the distribution of wealth and the disparity that is getting "deeper and bigger". She urged leaders to think very carefully about the people - and "distinguish the signal from the noise" in terms of what the numbers show.
It was a note sounded again and again throughout the week - in our increasingly tech-fuelled quest for growth and productivitywe risk focusing on the wrong things.
“If we want peaceful societieswe have to ensure social cohesion," said Adecco Group CEO Denis Machuel in the session Workers in the Driver's Seat. "We don’t see any place where people are immune from these forces that are happening.”
André HoffmannVice-ChairmanRoche Holding and the Forum's Interim Co-Chair outlined the stark reality we face on the environment: “If you have no natureyou have no humanityyou have no businessyou have no dividendyou have no shareholders.”
We risk being those business and political leaders who knew of the planet's limits and elected to cross them anyway.
”“We now have overwhelming evidence of the need to transition the global economy within prosperitywithin planetary boundaries,” said Johan RockströmDirectorPotsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
On healthMosa MoshabelaVice-Chancellor and PrincipalUniversity of Cape Town warned. "Between 2011 and 2030the world will spend more than $30 trillion tackling non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Instead of incurring the expenseswe could be preventing them and investing that money more in prevention."
While Fatih BirolExecutive Director of the International Energy Agency said he had "never seen" the energy security risks multiplying like this: "Energy security should be elevated to the level of national security.”
Public debt and the need for humanitarian aid loomed large.
Georgieva reminded her audience that some developing countries are spending more on debt repayments than on healthcare and education - and urged them to restructure debt.
Rebeca GrynspanSecretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Developmentsaid a public-debt crisis is one of the shocks she fears most - with developing countries caught between a rock and a hard place on fiscal choices.
"They don’t want to default on the debtbut they’re defaulting on development."
David MilibandPresident and Chief Executive OfficerInternational Rescue Committeesaid the humanitarian aid sector had shrunk by 50% in 2024: "The need for new thinking about how to finance development finance comes into sharp relief."
Understandablyconversations on AI permeated many of the sessions. From the technology's impact on jobsto the equitable diffusion of its benefits and the effect that exposing our children to it will have on themthe subtext was very much about how to safeguard our humanity.
"Being creative is really about your ability to tolerate uncertainty," said Becky Kennedy CEO & FounderGood Insideexplaining that the shortcuts offered by AI paradoxically mean we run the risk of children never learning the skills to thrive in an age of AI.
"That is no way going to be possible if we are downgrading the experience along the way. That's the part of the AI conversation that I haven’t heard surfaced enough.”
"As a childif you don’t get a chance to develop these cognitive skillsto develop the neural pathwayswe’re in trouble,” echoed Anna Frances Griffiths (Vignoles)Director of the Leverhulme Trustin a session on Defying Cognitive Atrophy.
Jonathan Haidtauthor of The Anxious Generationlaid it on the line: “We let these companies hack our attentionwith devastating cognitive and emotional resultsnow we’re letting them hack our attachment. And that will be catastrophic for humanity."
And here's a very prominent growth dilemma: 40% of jobs globally are going to be impacted by AI over the next couple of yearsGeorgieva saideither by being transformed or eliminated. In advanced economies the figure is 60%. The IMF itself is not immune to this trendshe said – it’s gone from 200 translators to just 50.
Khalid Al-FalihMinister of Investment Saudi Arabia said: “The essence of AI's power is it has to be accessible… Diffusion is not just within economies that have to competebut I believe it has to be done globally.”
Leaders from technology companies addressed the opportunities AI presents - and the guardrails required. NVIDIA's Jensen Huang said AI was likely to close the technology divide: "I'm fairly optimistic about the potential of AI to lift and to empower people."
"We have to reinvent processes and amplify the potential of humans rather than eliminate work," said Ravi Kumar S.CEOCognizant. As a global community have to get to a point where "we are using [AI] to do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said.
It’s human in the leadnot human in the loop.
”3. Dialogue does move the dial
"It's a moment of uncertainty but also possibility," said Forum President Børge Brende on Mondayas the Annual Meeting kicked off with the Opening Concert. "It's also a moment when dialogue is not a luxurybut a necessity. There is no way we can move the world forward without starting to speak to each other."
Larry FinkInterim Co-Chair of the Forumsaid"the most important thing we must do is listen. We're not going to agree on everything. In factI'm sure we're going to disagree. But can we find a way to have a conversation – openly disagree? But through the disagreementcan we deepen our understanding of each other?".
The fact that close to 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries travelled all the way to Davos "says something"said Mohammed Al-JadaanSaudi Arabia's Minister of Finance.
Even the most powerful needed to come here and seek dialogue because there are areas where they just can't solve it on their ownno matter how powerful they are.
”We need to make sure we embrace dialogue and cooperation - and embrace internationalmultilateral organizations like the World Bank and the IMF "because uncertainty requires these kind of institutions to provide support".
He Lifeng summed up the situation in two neat analogieswhich in themselves were a recurrent rhetorical feature.
"Amidst the rage and torrents of a global crisiscountries are not riding separately in some 190 small boats but are rather all in a giant ship on which our shared destiny hinges."
Making the pie bigger together is more important than fighting for the pie and solving problems together is more effective than blaming each other.
”Away from the public programmedialogue continued. High-stakes geopolitical negotiationsand bilateral discussions signalled significant shifts in global economic and security architecture.
On Wednesday morningspeaking in the session Can Europe Defend Itself? NATO chief Mark Rutte acknowledged “there are tensions at the moment" around Trump's designs on Greenland. "But the only way to deal with it is through thoughtful diplomacy.”
You can be assured that I'm working on this issue behind the scenesbut I cannot do that in public.
”At lunchtimeTrump assured the world he "won't use force" to acquire Greenland in his Special Address - and by Thursday morningTrump and Rutte had announced a Greenland "framework deal" enhancing Arctic security while averting tariff threats.
Attention turned to Ukraine on Thursdayas President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a Special Address. He later met with Trump to finalize the terms of security guarantees and told reporters that trilateral talks (US-Ukraine-Russia) would begin in Abu Dhabi on 23 January.
“Everyone has to be readynot only Ukraine,” he said. “It’s better than not having any type of dialogue.”
God blessthe war will stop. I hope so.
”"We are not supposed to be an echo chamber of consensus," said Brende in his closing speech. "Real dialogue requires patiencecommitment and creativitybut it is really necessarybecause the absence of this course deepens division."
4. Living the questions
Unlike previous yearsthis Davos was framed around 5 defining questions:
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- How can we cooperate in a more contested world?
- How can we unlock new sources of growth?
- How can we better invest in people?
- How can we deploy innovation at scale and responsibly?
- How can we build prosperity within planetary boundaries?
Over the course of the weekmany more questions were asked.
Sessions themselves posed questions likeIs Everyone Falling Behind?Who is Winning on Energy Security?Who Brokers Trust Now?Is Democracy in Trouble?Will We Ever Have a Global Plastics Treaty? and Can Europe Defend Itself?
Yessaid Rutte on that last question.
Perhaps most cruciallywe must ask ourselves what people wantsaid Georgieva.
"My message to everybody is learn to think of the unthinkable and then stay calmthe world now is trulygenuinely multi-polar. Technology is moving so rapidlychanges are happening so fastwhat is surprising in this story is the incredible resilience of the world economy.
"And I think if you step backwhat do people want? They want peace and well-being for themfor their families."
There’s a tension between economic and geopolitical policies and worker’s rightssaid Roxana MînzatuExecutive Vice-President for Social Rights and SkillsQuality Jobs and PreparednessEuropean Commission: “How do we stay human-centric as AI is introduced to our production processes?”
We need to think about what it means to have a quality job in the context of a human working with an AI agent: "AI is a tool for nowbut it depends on how each organization deploys it."
HistorianYuval Noah Harari said nobody has any experience in building a hybrid human-AI society. "I don't know what the answer is. The question ishow do we build a self-correcting mechanismso if we take the wrong betthis is not the end?"
But asking the right questions is a step toward solving them and being comfortable with uncertainty.
"For humansstanding still is not an option"said Guy ParmelinPresident of the Swiss Confederation in his opening remarks as he quoted philosopher Henri Bergson"to exist is to change".
As Brende said: “We are standing at the start of a new realitythe contours of which are still to be defined."
We must now live the questions.
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Contents
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Gayle Markovitz and Maxwell Hall
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