Agencies
The 2025 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), a prominent gathering in the Swiss town of Davos, is set to commence on Jan. 20, gathering top global business and political leaders for discussions under the theme “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age.”
The 55th annual meeting of WEF will run through Jan. 24 and is expected to bring together approximately 3,000 leaders from more than 130 countries, according to organizers.
This year’s meeting in Davos is taking place against some of the major risks to the global economy, ranging from armed conflicts and extreme weather events to misinformation and disinformation, as identified by a WEF study shared earlier this week.
Armed conflict is the top risk in 2025, a WEF survey released on Wednesday showed, a reminder of the deepening global fragmentation as government and business leaders attended the annual gathering.
Nearly one in four of the more than 900 experts surveyed across academia, business and policymaking ranked conflict, including wars and terrorism, as the most severe risk to economic growth for the year ahead.
Extreme weather, the No. 1 concern in 2024, was the second-ranked danger.
“Rising geopolitical tensions and a fracturing of trust are driving the global risk landscape,” WEF Managing Director Mirek Dusek said in comments accompanying the report. “In this complex and dynamic context, leaders have a choice: to find ways to foster collaboration and resilience, or face compounding vulnerabilities.” Donald Trump, who is due to be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Monday, will address the meeting virtually on Jan. 23, being one of the top leaders joining the event.
“He will join us digitally” on Thursday, Jan. 23, WEF President Borge Brende said in a press briefing previewing the annual meeting, adding it would be a “very special moment” to learn more about the new U.S. administration’s plans.
“There is a lot of interest, of course, among our participants – also the rest of the world – to decipher and understand the policies of the new administration,” he said.
The U.S. president’s return to the White House was already expected to dominate discussions in Davos, a gathering he attended during his first term in office.
Brende said organizers expected “high-level representation” from the Trump administration during the last few days of the WEF, which closes on Jan. 24.
Trump’s plans to cut taxes and impose trade tariffs have raised concerns that his policies could rekindle inflation and stifle global economic growth.
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, will attend the meeting and give a speech on Jan. 21, according to the WEF organizers.
Advisers to Trump concede that the Ukraine war will take months or even longer to resolve, Reuters reported on Wednesday, a sharp reality check on his pledge to strike a peace deal on his first day in the White House.
Among other global leaders due to attend the Davos meeting are European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang.
There will be a “different dynamic for this Davos,” said Josh Lipsky, senior director of Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, where attendees “will be reacting over the week to what’s coming out of the new White House.” Brende said 350 top government officials and more than 900 CEOs will attend this year’s WEF among nearly 3,000 participants.
Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to attend in nearly two decades, followed by another in 2020.
On the world stage, he has been increasingly joined by leaders of a similar persuasion after elections in 2024 saw incumbents pushed out.
One of his admirers, Argentine President Javier Milei, will return to Davos this year after a fiery debut speech in 2024.
“We’re seeing the re-emergence of countries thinking about their national interest,” said Karen Harris, an economist at the consulting firm Bain & Company.
While Trump inherits multiple crises in the Middle East, the WEF will host Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Mustafa, as well as Iranian Vice President Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Syria’s interim Foreign Minister, Asaad Hassan al-Shaibani, is also expected to take part weeks after the fall of Bashar Assad.
Away from geopolitics, artificial intelligence will be a major topic of discussion, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy among the attendees.
Yet, despite all high-profile visits, the WEF, in its survey on the global outlook, warned of “declining optimism.”
“As we enter 2025, the global outlook is increasingly fractured across geopolitical, environmental, societal, economic and technological domains.
Over the last year, we have witnessed the expansion and escalation of conflicts, a multitude of extreme weather events amplified by climate change, widespread societal and political polarization and continued technological advancements accelerating the spread of false or misleading information,” it said.
The threat of misinformation and disinformation was ranked as the most severe global risk over the next two years, according to the survey and it was the same ranking as in 2024.
The survey also showed that over a 10-year horizon, environmental threats dominated experts’ risk concerns. Extreme weather was the top longer-term global risk, followed by biodiversity loss, critical change to the earth’s systems and a shortage of natural resources.
Global temperatures last year exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial era for the first time, bringing the world closer to breaching the pledge governments made under the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
A global risk is defined by the survey as a condition that would negatively affect a significant proportion of the global gross domestic product (GDP), population or natural resources. Experts were surveyed in September and October.
The majority of respondents, 64%, expect a multipolar, fragmented global order to persist.
