Global Risks Report 2026 — SDGCounting Document Briefs

Publisher: World Economic Forum (produced exclusively by the Forum; Marsh and Zurich Insurance Group were longstanding partners on previous editions)
Edition: 21st edition, January 2026, built on the annual Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS)
Focus: “The Age of Competition”: a multipolar world where confrontation is replacing collaboration across geopolitical, economic, societal, environmental and technological risks
Related: Global Cooperation Barometer 2026, the WEF’s companion read on the cooperation side of the same ledger.

The Global Risks Report is the WEF’s annual reading of what the world’s leaders fear most, built on a survey of over 1,300 experts. The 2026 edition finds pessimism deepening and priorities shifting: geoeconomic confrontation now tops the near-term list, while the climate and nature risks that dominate the decade are being pushed down the short-term agenda even as the underlying threat grows.

The headline

Half of respondents (50%) anticipate a turbulent or stormy outlook over the next two years, rising to 57% over the next decade, with only 1% expecting a calm world across either horizon. The near-term landscape is defined by geopolitics: geoeconomic confrontation is the risk most likely to trigger a material global crisis in 2026, selected by 18% of respondents, followed by state-based armed conflict at 14%. Over the decade, environmental risks still dominate, led by extreme weather events, but in the two-year view a majority of them fell in both rank and severity. The report frames this as an age of competition in which multilateral cooperation is in retreat.

Saadia Zahidi, Managing Director, World Economic Forum: “As the Global Risks Report enters its 21st year, one lesson endures: cooperation is indispensable for global risk management.”

The numbers

The outlook. 50% expect a turbulent or stormy next two years and 57% over 10 years; only 1% expect calm, and near-term pessimism is up 14 percentage points from last year.
Top risk for 2026. Geoeconomic confrontation, selected by 18% of respondents, ahead of state-based armed conflict at 14%.
Two-year severity ranking. Geoeconomic confrontation (#1), misinformation and disinformation (#2), societal polarization (#3), extreme weather events (#4), state-based armed conflict (#5).
Ten-year severity ranking. Extreme weather events (#1), biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (#2), critical change to Earth systems (#3), misinformation and disinformation (#4), adverse outcomes of AI technologies (#5).
The AI leap. Adverse outcomes of AI technologies rise from #30 on the two-year list to #5 over 10 years, the sharpest jump in rank of any of the 33 risks.
Inequality. Named the most interconnected global risk for a second year running.
A fragmenting order. 68% expect a multipolar or fragmented order over the next decade; just 6% expect a return to the US-led, rules-based order.

The counting angle

This report counts perceptions, not events. Its numbers are what over 1,300 leaders and 11,000-plus executives believe about severity, scored on a 1–7 scale, not a measured tally of harm. That makes the most telling finding a gap between sentiment and evidence: every environmental risk fell in perceived two-year severity even though the report itself notes 2024 was the warmest year on record, above 1.5°C. When attention is the scarce resource, a survey that reprioritizes climate downward can shift financing and political will away from exactly the SDG targets whose physical indicators are still worsening. Perception is a leading signal of where money and mandates will go, which is why the divergence from the measured record matters.

Our read: The value here is the delta, not the ranking. Leaders are talking themselves into treating climate and nature as a long-term problem while the data says the impacts are already here. For the 2030 Agenda, that reprioritization is itself a risk, because attention and finance follow perceived urgency, not the underlying trend line.

Watch & read

Global Risks Report 2026, the full report and interactive data platform (World Economic Forum).
Global Cooperation Barometer 2026, the WEF’s companion measure of where collaboration is holding up.

Figures are the WEF’s own, from the Global Risks Perception Survey 2025–2026 (responses collected 12 August–22 September 2025) and the Executive Opinion Survey. Rankings reflect surveyed severity, not observed outcomes; percentages are as reported and some may not sum to 100 due to rounding.