WEF/Annual Meeting/2026

Davos, Switzerland

 WEF/Annual Meeting/2026(WEF/Annual Meeting)

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File:55051952304 9eb0c615a7 k.jpg Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, the biggest asset manager in the world, addresses the audience as co-chair of the WEF
Date	19 January 2026 - 23 January 2026
Location	Davos, Switzerland
Description	Held in Davos, Switzerland January 2026.
Planners	WEF
Participants	Lara Abrash, Omar Abbosh, Salim Abdool Karim, Kibret Abebe, Marina Abramović, Enrique Acevedo, Emad Adly, Noubar Afeyan, Ravi Agrawal, Philippe Aghion, Hanin Ahmed, Maryam bint Ahmed Al Hammadi, Jasem Al Budaiwi, Majid Al-Kasabi, Ahmed Al Khateeb, Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, Khaldoon Khalifa Al Mubarak, Thani Ahmed Al Zeyoudi, Mohammed Al-Issa, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, Rania Al-Mashat, Mina Al-Oraibi, Abdullah AlSwaha, Hisham Alrayes, Laura Alber, Erica Alessandri, Ilaire Aliyev, Jeremy Allaire, Graham Allison, Harini Amarasuriya, Victor Ambros, Dario Amodei, Cristiano Amon, Anita Anand, Jamil Edmond Anderlini, Henrik Andersen, Marilyne Andersen, Ioannis Antonoglou, Fernando Hugo Aramayo, Marco Arcelli, Brian Armstrong, Josef Aschbacher, Muhammad Aurangzeb, Gwenaelle Avice Huet, Azeem Azhar, David Bach, Annalena Baerbock, Joon Baek, Sanjiv Bajaj, Shuchin Bajaj, Gerard Baker, Anindya Novyan Bakrie, Zoe Balmforth, Stéphane Bancel, Ajay S. Banga, Nir Bar Dea, Dorothee Bär, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, Jean-Noël Barrot, Steven Bartlett, Karen Basiye, Oliver Bäte, Jon Batiste, Ioana Bauer, Valerie Baudson, Zanny Minton Beddoes, Mark Benedetti, Yoshua Bengio, Marc Benioff, Katrin Bennhold, Marguerite Bérard, Joumanna Bercetche, Stanley M. Bergman, Andy Beshear, Scott Bessent, Herman Betten, Aman Bhutani, Fatih Birol, Thijs Biersteker, Julius Maada Bio, Amer Bisat, Olivier Blum, Doreen Bogdan-Martin, Ivan Bogdan, Zachary Bogue, Iris Bohnet, Stefan Rolf Bollinger, Francois Bonnici, Jason Bordoff, Anna Borg, Rachel Botsman, Albert Bourla, Nasser Bourita, Chris Bowen, Diane Brady, Ruben Brekelmans,Ian Bremmer, Børge Brende, Nancy Brown, Tania Bryer, Erik Brynjolfsson, Thomas Buberl, Kyrylo Budanov, Kimberly Budil, Ebba Busch, Roland Busch, Levent Cakiroglu, Nadia Calviño, Alastair Campbell, Renaud Capuçon, Mark Carney, Greg Case, Oren Cass, Jim Chalmers, François-Philippe Champagne, Bonnie Y. Chan, Paul Chan Mo-po, Jagan Chapagain, Daniel Francisco Chapo, Martina Cheung, Yejin Choi, Helen E. Clark, Kathleen Claussen, Viswa Colluru, Christopher A. Coons, Mathias Cormann, Samantha Cristoforetti, Carlos Cuerpo Caballero, Henry Curr, Rania Dagash, Matt Damon, Brandon Daniels, Mohammad Ishaq Dar, Mazen S. Darwazeh, Catherine De Bolle, Alexander De Croo, Nacho De Marco, Christophe De Vusser, Bart De Wever, Alessandro Del Piero, Michel Demaré, Gobind Singh Deo, Richard Dickson, Daniel Diermeier, Jamie Dimon, Ramachandran Dinesh, Makhtar Diop, Valdis Dombrovskis, Andrzej Domański, Hatem Dowidar, Mirek Dušek, Esther Dweck, Sylvia Earle, Janice Eberly, Claudia Romo Edelman, Richard W. Edelman, Wale Edun, Espen Barth Eide, Katrin Eigendorf, Sara Eisen, Sabrina Dhowre Elba, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, Hassan Elkhatib, Michael Ensser, Sergio P. Ermotti, Comfort Ero, Carl Eschenbach, André Esteves, Alice Evans, Martin Eurnekian, Aiman Ezzat, Bahia Ezzat Jaafar, Hisham Ezz-Al-Arab, Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, Don Farrell, Alexandre Fasel, Niall Ferguson, Jonathan Ferro, Hakan Fidan, Laurence D. Fink, Alexa Firmenich, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Stephanie Flanders, Bernard Fontana, Kristin J. Forbes, Andrew Forrest, Joseph Fowler, Simon Freakley, Sarah Friar, Ina Turpen Fried, Jeffry A. Frieden, Christian Frutiger, Erica Fuchs, Robert Gabriel, Alexander Gabuev, Kelly Sims Gallagher, Scott Galloway, Raj Ganguly, Brad Garlinghouse, Bill Gates, Florence Gaub, John Gedmark, David Gelles, Kristalina Georgieva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Sassine Ghazi, Fabiola Gianotti, Rachel Glennerster, Andrés Gluski, Nadir Godrej, Ilan Goldfajn, Pinchas Goldschmidt, Aidan Gomez, Altagracia Gomez Sierra, Arancha Gonzalez Laya, Gita Gopinath, Adrian Gore, Al Gore, Adam Grant, Jamieson Greer, Ken Griffin, Anna Frances Griffiths (Vignoles), Rebeca Grynspan, Guan Xin, Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, Josh Gruenbaum, Shekhar Gupta, Rene Haas, Meutya Viada Hafid, William J. Hague, Jonathan Haidt, Zhao Hai, Jane Halton, Jane Harman, Yuval Noah Harari, James Harding, Karen Harris, Airlangga Hartarto, Oliver Hart, Demis Hassabis, Gary A. Haugen, Ricardo Hausmann, Taylor Hawkins, Jamie Heller, Mike Henry, Juvencio Maeztu Herrera, Isaac Herzog, Michal Herzog, Rob Heyvaert, Jack Hidary, Nicolas Hieronimus, Laura Hines-Pierce, Martina Hirayama, Jaime Ho, Jaime Ho, Arlie Russell Hochschild, André Hoffmann, Christy Hoffmann, Vicki Hollub, Svein Tore Holsether, Mat Honan, Iwao Horii, Peter Howitt, Fred Hu, Hélène Huby, Paul Hudson, Jasmin Hume, Kara Hurst, Andrea Illy, Gianni Infantino, Paula Ingabire, Michael Intrator, Nancy Ip, Wolfgang Ischinger, Ahmed Galal Ismail, Omar Itani, Eisaku Ito, Hiro Iwamoto, Rick Jacobs, Majid Jafar, Roy Jakobs, Suleika Jaouad, Pan Jian, Shen Jianguang, Jennifer Johnson, Peggy Johnson, Pralhad Venkatesh Joshi, JR (artist), Jeremy Jurgens, Sigrid Kaag, Ilham Kadri, Kate Kallot, Masato Kanda, Vimal Kapur, Joel Kaplan, Kian Katanforoosh, Satsuki Katayama, Dan Katz, Gong Ke, Wamkele Keabetswe Mene, Conrad Keijzer, Diene Keita, Karin Keller-Sutter, Sarah Kelly, Becky Kennedy, Suzan Kereere, Vahagn Khachaturyan, Mehreen Khan, Dara Khosrowshahi, Dong-Won Kim, Jenny Kim, Christian Klein, Kathryn Koch, Jayee Koffey, Shinjiro Koizumi, Christina Kosmowski, Malte Kosub, Ahmed Kouchouk, Keith Krach, Michael Kratsios, Arvind Krishna, Ulf Kristersson, Renato Krpoun, André Kudelski, Verena Kuhn, Raj Kumar, Ravi Kumar S., Jared Kushner, Kasim Kutay, Peter Kyle, Francine Lacqua, Christine Lagarde, Ramon Laguarta, Ben Lamm, Ronald Lamola, Hélène Landemore, Alvaro Lario, Aileen S. Lee, Mark Leonard, Maria Leptin, Jessica Lessin, Helena Leurent, Maurice Lévy, Cathy Li, Stella Li, Kris Licht, Natan Linder, Benjamine Liu, Jake Loosararian, Michelle Longmire, Enrique Lores, Angela Oduor Lungati, Caroline Lustenberger, Emil Luth, Howard W. Lutnick, Richard K. Lyons, Yo-Yo Ma, Denis Machuel, Emmanuel Macron, Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, Johanna Mair, Juliet Mann, Sunny Mann, Marija Manojlovic, Chris Mansi, Nyifamu Manzo, James Hame Marape, Temi Marcella, Kate Marino, Kamila Markram, Daniel Marokane, Lynn Martin, Micheál Martin, John Martinis, Harvey Mason Jr., Lerato Mataboge, Hisashi Matsumoto, Sebastian Matthes, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Nomzamo Mbatha, Andrew McAfee, Padraig McDonnell, David McKay, Michael E. McKelvy, Ryan McInerney, William L. Meaney, Arthur Mensch, Friedrich Merz, Ravi Mhatre, John Micklethwait, Michael Miebach, Javier Milei, David Miliband, Linda Mills, Roxana Mînzatu, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Gilles Moëc, Mark Moffat, Ahmed Shide Mohamed, Bernd Montag, Juan Carlos Mora, Takayuki Morita, Francois-Ghislain Morillion, Jennifer Morris, Boitumelo Mosako, Mosa Moshabela, Annette Mosman, Brian Moynihan, Jose Raul Mulino Quintero, Bob Mumgaard, Alexandru Munteanu, Dan Murphy, Marc Murtra, Elon Musk, Mohammad Mustafa, Godfrey Mutizwa, Satya Nadella, Joachim Nagel, Tulsi Naidu, Mounir Nakhla, Vas Narasimhan, Amin Nasser, Priyamvada Natarajan, Deepak Nath, Gitanas Nausėda, Karol Nawrocki, Anne Neuberger, Gavin Newsom, Andrew Ng, Robin Niblett, Nandan Nilekani, Takeshi Niinami, Sania Nishtar, Ekniti Nitithanprapas, Daniel Noboa Azín, Hayashi Nobumitsu, Nonkululeko Nyembezi, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Lene Oddershede, Ronald P. O'Hanley, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Kajsa Ollongren, Olivia Onyemaobi, Viktor Orbán, Bettina Orlopp, Meghan O'Sullivan, Mehmet Oz, Ebru Özdemir, Belen Paez, Himanshu Palsule, Mahendra Pandey, Salil S. Parekh, Guy Parmelin, Joshua Payne, Mark Penn, Santiago Peña, Lars Petersson, Gustavo Petro, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, Gustavo Pimenta, Katie Piper, Christopher Pissarides, Dragoș Pîslaru, Andrej Plenković, Amy Pope, Ruth Porat, Arjun Prakash, Eswar Prasad, Deborah Prentice, Jonathan Price, Matthew Prince, Jonas Prising, Kalli Purie, Ana Maria Raad, Gideon Rachman, Samuele Ramadori, José Manuel Ramos Horta, Barak Ravid, Bill Ready, Jonathan Reckford, Rachel Reeves, Sarah Reisinger, Odile Françoise Renaud-Basso, Nela Richardson, Edgars Rinkēvičs, Chuck Robbins, Alexi Robichaux, Johan Rockström, Rosan Roeslani, Sarah B. Rogers, Kenneth Rogoff, Orlando Rojas, Marina Romanello, Mark Edward Rose, Jessica Rosencrantz, Jan Rosenow, Jessica Rosenworcel, Daniel Roth, Jessika Roswall, John-Arne Røttingen, Alexandra Roulet, Marco Rubio, David M. Rubenstein, Kevin Rudd, Alice Ruhweza, Daniela Rus, Catherine Russell, Mark Rutte, Akazawa Ryosei, David Sacks, Ayman Safadi, Arvinder Singh Sahney, Hussain Sajwani, Henadi Al Saleh, Barham Salih, Bruno Sánchez-Andrade Nuño, Martin Sandbu, Sano Takeshi, Samir Saran, Viviantie Sarjuni, Hugo Sarrazin, Hamzah Sarwar, Yutaka Sasaki, Celeste Saulo, Charles Scharf, Jennifer Schenker, Orazio Schillaci, Martin Schlegel, Carsten Schneider, Dick Schoof, Kirsten Schuijt, John Schultz, Christoph Schweizer, Severin Schwan, James Scriven, Steve Sedgwick, Michael Sen, Andrew Serwer, Christian Sewing, Anish Shah, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, Kashim Shettima, Jai Shroff, Dana Shukirbayeva, Elizabeth Shuler, Mihir Shukla, Lutfey Siddiqi, Boudewijn Siemons, Radosław Sikorski, António Simões, Bipul Sinha, Sumant Sinha, Pandu Patria Sjahrir, Magdalena Skipper, Daniel Skovronsky, Ben Smith, Brad Smith, Richard Socher, Vera Songwe, Andrew R. Sorkin, Martin Sorrell, Milojko Spajić, K. R. Sridhar, Mati Staniszewski, Stefanie Stantcheva, Bret L. Stephens, Alfred Stern, Bob Sternfels, Bryan Stevenson, Jonas Gahr Støre, Jens Stoltenberg, Alexander Stubb, Johann Jurie Strydom, Prabowo Subianto, Sugiono, Federico Sturzenegger, Julie Sweet, Frank Tang Kui, Ronen Tanchum, Daren Tang, Steven Tananbaum, Ville Tavio, Bret Taylor, Dylan Taylor, Jo Taylor, Max Tegmark, Gillian R. Tett, Piyush Tewari, Jasim Husain Ahmed Thabet, Sheikh Bandar Bin Mohammed Bin Saoud Al-Thani, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Ishaan Tharoor, Nicholas Thompson, Mads Krogsgaard Thomsen, Elizabeth Thurbon, Thom Tillis, Oana-Silvia Toiu, Eden Tolesa, Pat Tomlinson, Carlson Tong, Edwin Tong Chun Fai, Dowson Tong, Adam Tooze, Irene Tracey, Sakti Wahyu Trenggono, Luc Triangle, Andreas Trojan, Donald Trump, Janet Truncale, Eric Tse S. Y., Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi Tshilombo, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, Sherry Turkle, Laura D'Andrea Tyson, Apostolos Tzitzikostas, Joe Ucuzoglu, Christian Ulbrich, Juliana Uribe, Valdecy Urquiza, Ashwini Vaishnaw, Sasha Vakulina, Elina Valtonen, Vijay Vythianathan Vaitheeswaran, Manon van Beek, Steven van Rijswijk, Mirjam Varadinis, Gina Vargiu-Breuer, Brendan Vaughan, Shamsheer Vayalil, Julio Velarde, Dan Viederman, François Villeroy de Galhau, Robin Vince, Henna Virkkunen, Aleksandar Vučić, Meenakshi (Meena) Wadhwa, Meutya Viada Hafid, Teddy Indra Wijaya, Wanji Walcott, Marcus Wallenberg, Anne Walsh, Nina Warken, Tian Wei, Kathy Wengel, Arsène Wenger, Johan Westman, Gary White, Meredith Whittaker, Aulani Wilhelm, Bob Willen, will.i.am, Bill Winters, Steve Witkoff, Ngaire Woods, Chris Wright, Peng Xiao, Eric Xing, Sandy Xu Ran, Amir Yaron, Siu Yat, Yeo Han-koo, Nadav Zafrir, Saadia Zahidi, Ekaterina Zaharieva, Kıvanç Zaimler, Fareed Zakaria, Michelle Zatlyn, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Angela Zhang Huyue, Zhang Lei, Yutong Zhang, Changpeng Zhao, Zhu Min, Ana Carolina Zimmermann

The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum 2026 took place in Davos, Klosters from 19-23 January. The meeting brought together more than 2,500 delegates from government, business and civil society of whom are listed here.

Own words

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US President Donald Trump spoke to a decidedly cool crowd. He opined that Europe was not going in the right direction, mentioning mass immigration and the "fraud" of the green energy transition as reasons, among others. The suggested that EU countries needed to better orient themselves towards the USA.

The programme was structured around "five key global challenges where public-private dialogue and cooperation, involving all stakeholders, is necessary for progress."

1. How can we cooperate in a more contested world?
2. How can we unlock new sources of growth?
3. How can we better invest in people?
4. How can we deploy innovation at scale and responsibly?
5. How can we build prosperity within planetary boundaries?

Activities

During Bill Gates appearance, he complained that financial support for his global health initiatives had collapsed. At the same time, he enthusiastically reported on his new $50 million experiment, which he plans to conduct in Rwanda and other African countries together with the US software company OpenAI. By 2028, AI tools are to be introduced into the primary health networks there.

On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla gave an interview. Bourla let it be known that he was frustrated and worried about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Although he maintains a "very strong and respectful relationship" with him, he could only discuss things with him that they could agree on. The topic of "vaccinations" is not one of them, in this regard they would live in different worlds. Kennedy's attitude described Bourla as a kind of "religion". When asked what ultimately needs to change, he replied, "The secretary of health."

Watch on YouTube

James O'Keefe went undercover, speaking to WEF insiders discussing carbon taxes, chemtrails and weather modification. WEF insider Emil Luth who worked with DARPA discussed hidden plans about artificial rain. The President and CEO at 4AIR said "the ability to put sulfur dioxide up there is pretty cheap way to cool down the earth." Sara Lemniei, CEO of SLK Capital, boasted about being one of the largest climate tax innovators for the UK government. "We are looking at some carbon credits and renewable energy in the compliance markets," she said. "We are looking at CBAM [Carbon Border Adjustments] which is one of the new regulations where companies are exporting to Europe."

Participants

Only high-profile attendees or people who were panel participants are known, so around a quarter of all attendees, of whom have pages listed here.

Non-Participants

The founder of the WEF Klaus Schwab was absent for the first time since 1971. The Danish government delegation also stayed away to protest US President Donald Trump's posturing on annexing Greenland.

The Social Function of WEF

{{#subobject: |Has superobject=WEF/Annual Meeting/2026 |Has objectClass=Quotation |Has author=Nel Bonilla|+sep=, |Has text=“Now, WEF in particular is such an elite gathering and it performs several functions. The attendance at Davos itself leads to an institutionalized recognition that one is member of a global elite. Further, the networks formed at such a meeting can be converted into economic benefit (through deals and contracts) but also political influence (e.g. policy coordination). Thus, whether decisions were made here, I don't know, but the informal gatherings that such venues as Davos provide do offer the possibility for such actions...
It is also where elites hear the same story from different elite stakeholders, thereby aligning their cognitive maps and talking points for the year. It’s about reducing entropy within the ruling stratum. It's also a space to forge a working consensus on permissible policies and realistic horizons. Disagreements are managed within the boundaries of shared class and systemic interests (e.g., how to secure critical minerals, not whether to prioritize securitization over the welfare state).

Lastly, the event generates a media cascade that signals to investors, bureaucrats, and the professional-managerial class what the 'serious people' are now thinking. The carefully curated release of reports and speeches provides a legitimizing intellectual gloss for policies that will later be implemented. It’s the first green light for more austerity, mobilization, and the normalization of amoral realism.

Therefore, Davos 2026 was not where these larger political frameworks of pragmatism, technocracy, and the 'mask off' moment were decided or debated, but it was rather where decisions were publicly synchronized across the transatlantic system. It is a dynamic of structural coordination through shared class position and all of which this implies...

This is the shift from 'liberal internationalism' (universal rules, human rights, multilateral institutions) to 'value-based realism' (bloc cohesion, strategic resilience, hard power) is thus nothing more than a taking the mask off moment as well as a justification for the coming harshness, the amoralness.” |Is about=WEF/Annual Meeting/2026,|+sep=, |Has wikipediaPage= |Has location=|+sep=, |Has publicationDate=January 2026 |Sourced from= |Has sourceDetails= |Has sourceTitle= |Has sourceName= |Has sourceURL=https://archive.is/wip/vEJLd

}}

“Now, WEF in particular is such an elite gathering and it performs several functions. The attendance at Davos itself leads to an institutionalized recognition that one is member of a global elite. Further, the networks formed at such a meeting can be converted into economic benefit (through deals and contracts) but also political influence (e.g. policy coordination). Thus, whether decisions were made here, I don't know, but the informal gatherings that such venues as Davos provide do offer the possibility for such actions...

It is also where elites hear the same story from different elite stakeholders, thereby aligning their cognitive maps and talking points for the year. It’s about reducing entropy within the ruling stratum. It's also a space to forge a working consensus on permissible policies and realistic horizons. Disagreements are managed within the boundaries of shared class and systemic interests (e.g., how to secure critical minerals, not whether to prioritize securitization over the welfare state).

Lastly, the event generates a media cascade that signals to investors, bureaucrats, and the professional-managerial class what the 'serious people' are now thinking. The carefully curated release of reports and speeches provides a legitimizing intellectual gloss for policies that will later be implemented. It’s the first green light for more austerity, mobilization, and the normalization of amoral realism.

Therefore, Davos 2026 was not where these larger political frameworks of pragmatism, technocracy, and the 'mask off' moment were decided or debated, but it was rather where decisions were publicly synchronized across the transatlantic system. It is a dynamic of structural coordination through shared class position and all of which this implies...

This is the shift from 'liberal internationalism' (universal rules, human rights, multilateral institutions) to 'value-based realism' (bloc cohesion, strategic resilience, hard power) is thus nothing more than a taking the mask off moment as well as a justification for the coming harshness, the amoralness.”
Nel Bonilla (January 2026) 

The bankability of defense

Bonilla also pointed out how

In Davos, the focus was firmly on the bankability of defense. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte used the forum to pitch defense spending as an engine of re-industrialization. In panels like "Can Europe Defend Itself?", the rhetorical foundation was laid to shift weapons manufacturing from an ethical gray area into a prerequisite for economic stability, effectively branding security as sustainability. Because of the heavy presence of financial elites alongside defense CEOs, the groundwork for the public-private partnerships later announced at [the NATO summit] in Ankara was established here, allowing leaders to align on mechanisms like the NATO Innovation Fund and multi-year guaranteed procurement contracts.

Many thanks to our Patrons who cover ~2/3 of our hosting bill. Please join them if you can.

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