The World Economic Forum (WEF) is hosting its annual meeting, Davos 2025, from January 20–24 next year, under the theme “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.” The 2025 annual meeting will convene global leaders to address key global and regional challenges including responding to geopolitical shocks, stimulating growth to improve living standards, and leading a just and inclusive energy transition.
Switzerland’s Davos is the highest town in Europe. Ever since the WEF brought its annual meeting to the town, the name resonates with the flagship event. The meeting convenes government, business and civil society leaders to set the year’s agenda for how leaders can make the world a better place for all.
Davos 2025’s program will be oriented around five distinct but highly interconnected thematic priorities: Rebuilding trust, reimagining growth, investing in people, safeguarding the planet and industries in the intelligent age.
Why is Davos 2025 important?
Davos 2025’s relevance as a global gathering sits within and beyond the official program. The importance of dialogue, often happening in private conversations, reveals an important mission to convene leaders when threats to world stability are multiplying.
Established more than 50 years ago, the annual meeting seeks to embody the spirit of Davos, which is an attitude of openness and cooperation that is core to the mission of the WEF. The Davos Manifesto, created in 1973 and renewed in 2020, lays out the principles of stakeholder capitalism or a system of shared goals for businesses.
Over the years, the program of the WEF annual meeting has focused on the evolving challenges facing the world. Several topics have been a constant theme including climate change, inclusion, diversity and how economies can be developed to meet the needs of everyone.
However, the agenda changes every year to address the world’s most pressing issues, from pandemic preparedness and reskilling to the state of the global economy and the energy transition. Today, the program contains more than 300 sessions, 200 of which are live-streamed to a global audience, that aim to accelerate progress and tackle global challenges.
What to expect at Davos 2025
Davos 2025 is convening next year amid rising geo-economic uncertainty, trade tensions, cultural polarization and climate anxiety. But there’s also the promise of rapid innovation like AI, quantum computing, and biotech, which are expected to boost productivity and living standards.
The meeting’s theme, ‘Collaboration for the Intelligent Age,’ draws on Klaus Schwab’s suggestion that converging technologies are rapidly reshaping the world, pushing the world to an inflection point, “an era far beyond technology alone. This is a societal revolution, one that has the power to elevate humanity – or indeed to fracture it”, he says.
Some of the biggest questions that Davos 2025 will tackle include:
- What are the biggest questions for leaders as they grapple with the challenge of collaboration in an age of converging technologies and hyperintelligence?
- How can we avoid fragmentation and build a smarter future?
- How can innovation tackle crises like climate change and the misuse of technology?
- Will collective action and responsible leadership foster equality, sustainability and collaboration rather than deepen existing divides?
Five key areas
The World Economic Forum annual meeting is organized under five areas:
Reimagining growth
Reviving and reimagining growth is critical to building stronger and more resilient economies. Davos 2025 will lead discussions on how to identify new sources of growth in the new global economy.
Industries in the Intelligent Age
Industries have had to adapt their business strategies to account for major geo-economic and technological shifts. At the annual meeting, global leaders will discuss how business leaders can strike a balance between short-term goals and long-term imperatives amid the transformation of their industries.
Investing in People
Geoeconomic changes, the green transition and technological advancements are impacting everything from employment, skills and wealth distribution to healthcare, education and public services. Therefore, Davos 2025 will analyze how the public and private sectors can invest in human capital development and good jobs that contribute to the development of a modern and resilient society.
Safeguarding the Planet
Climate change and the environment have been key topics of discussion at the World Economic Forum annual meetings in recent years. Innovative partnerships and dialogue that enable investments and the deployment of climate and clean technologies will be critical to making progress on global climate and nature goals. They also play a major role in addressing the energy triangle of achieving equitable, secure and sustainable energy systems. At Davos 2025, global figures will discuss how the world can catalyze energy, climate and nature action through innovative partnerships, increased financing and the deployment of frontier technologies.
Rebuilding Trust
In an increasingly complex and fast-moving world, societal divides have deepened, geopolitics is multipolar, and policy is shifting towards protectionism, hampering both trade and investment. Davos 2025 will answer the pressing question “How can stakeholders find new ways to collaborate on solutions both internationally and within societies?”
Who will attend Davos 2025?
Davos is an invitation-only event that brings together heads of state and private-sector leaders as well as many of the leading voices from civil society and academia. This includes politicians from across the political spectrum, change-makers in the private sector and the top minds from various areas of expertise. It also includes activists, artists, labor leaders, Indigenous community members and prominent youth voices.
The global public can watch and engage with the annual meeting through live-streamed sessions, social media and virtual connections to Forum hubs, centers and projects around the world. In line with the Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report launched in 2005, Davos strives to be a gender-equal platform. In recent years, women have made up a quarter of attendees, a higher proportion than among world or business leaders.
At Davos 2024, attendees came from 125 countries, involving several Forum communities. Chief executives and chairs of the Forum 1,000 Partner companies actively engaged in initiatives and communities such as the International Business Council, Community of Chairpersons and Industry Governors. Public figures from across the world including G7 and G20 countries as well as heads of international organizations also participated.
In addition, leaders from civil society, labor and media organizations as well as top thinkers and academics were a part of the annual meeting. Other notable attendees included members of the Unicorn and Technology Pioneers communities, the Community of Global Shapers, the Forum of Young Global Leaders, and the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.
How to follow Davos 2025 activities
The World Economic Forum will bring Davos 2025 to a global audience through engaging and dynamic social media coverage. This includes live updates and sessions, in-depth interviews and thought-provoking discussions. The annual meeting will showcase the key moments, ideas, and leaders shaping the future through its social media platforms. It will also upload live-streamed sessions and videos to its YouTube channel.
The World Economic Forum will also upload articles and opinion pieces by participants on its website.
What comes next?
Davos tackles several issues and matters of global importance, from EV supply chains to the global debt burden, and from carbon pricing to reinventing retirement. Every year, the annual meeting sees the announcement of several initiatives, partnerships, accords and pledges. But it’s what happens during the other 51 weeks of the year that the impact of the meeting and the WEF gathers speed.
The forum is a platform where hundreds of initiatives are formed. Some of these initiatives remain managed by expert teams in-house, while others extend and grow beyond the scope of the forum.
One of the best examples is Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. The initiative began as an idea to reverse declining immunization rates resulting from unaffordable vaccines. Twenty-five years later, it has become an international network that is responsible for vaccinating more than one-half of the world’s children.
