Pandora's Black Box: Key Trends and Risks for 2026

Revolution First

Unlike previous years, when the primary sources of tension and uncertainty appeared to be the confrontation between Washington and Beijing, the risk of a new Cold War, or Putin’s militaristic revanchism, today the main source of global uncertainty and risk is the United States itself. This is a power that for decades embodied the idea of stability in the world order, write analysts in one of the most thorough and incisive reviews of the main risks and challenges of 2026 produced by Eurasia Group under the editorship of its founder, Ian Bremmer.

However, this is by no means only about Trump as an individual, a capricious old man with delusions of grandeur, as some believe. Trump embodies an attempt at revolution in the United States, contradictory but rooted in deep domestic causes, the authors of the report insist. Trump sees the main threat to himself, his allies and the United States not in external forces but in internal structures. In the course of this revolution, he intends to decisively dismantle the famous American system of checks and balances, enabling him to seize control of the state apparatus and turn it into a weapon against his enemies. His administration and supporters, however, view this project not as an assault on democracy but as a necessary purge of a political system captured by a deeply corrupt establishment. More than 77 million Americans voted for Trump in 2024 because they believed the American system was already broken and wanted someone who would finish dismantling it, the analysts argue.

This revolution is more likely ultimately to fail than to succeed, according to the report’s authors, but the system will not return to its previous status quo. Trump’s example will inspire many autocrats and advocates of personalist rule around the world. Most importantly, Trump’s extraordinary foreign policy activism is a projection of this revolution outwards and is aimed at destroying the rules and alliances created by his predecessors. As a result, squeezed by an internal political revolution, the United States itself is dismantling the global order it spent decades building. This final argument of the Eurasia Group report is echoed almost verbatim by analysts at the Stimson Center in their version of ‘Ten Major Risks for 2026’: in seeking to destroy the liberal international order, the United States is now fighting the very institutions it once created.

Eurasia Group places the 'American revolution' at the top of its list of risks for 2026. The central paradox of the current moment, therefore, is that while China and, more directly, Russia have challenged the old order, Trump’s America is responding with a counter move and in some respects an even more determined drive to dismantle it.

Make China great again

It was assumed that containing China would be one of Trump’s main strategic objectives and that he would deploy his distinctive toolkit to pursue it. This toolkit combines media populism, reckless determination and hard-nosed pragmatism, which together were expected to deliver more than the ideologically driven foreign policy of the Democrats.

In reality, however, Trump has so far been failing in his confrontation with China. His attempt at a crude tariff offensive against Beijing ended in failure and retreat. At the same time, Trump’s commitment to an anti-liberal paradigm is leading to a paradoxical reversal of roles between the two superpowers. At least this is the case on the crucial issue of energy leadership, Eurasia Group analysts note. While China has bet on new energy technologies, including wind power, renewables and the world’s largest solar farms, and is rapidly building '21st-century infrastructure at discounted prices', Trump, by contrast, is imbued with hostility towards new energy and has focused on the fuels of the last century: oil, gas and the infrastructure associated with them. In the spirit of late 20th-century conspiracy theories, he seeks to secure dominant American control over fossil resources. As a result, a rapidly growing share of the world’s energy, mobility and industrial systems will be built on a Chinese foundation, which China is already exporting with considerable success, the Eurasia Group report predicts.

The ideology of 'America First' and its contradictory foreign policy have opened up new opportunities for China to expand its global influence, write the authors of The World Ahead 2026, The Economist’s annual survey. Timothy Ash, Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) go further, entitling their article 'How Trump Makes China Great and What This Means for Europe'. Drawing on surveys conducted in 15 European and six non-European countries, they show that a year of Trump’s presidency has led to a marked decline in US standing and a rise in China’s reputation.

The surveys indicate that many around the world expect China’s already substantial global influence to grow over the next decade, and that an increasing share of the world’s population views Beijing as an ally or a necessary partner. At the same time, the majority of respondents believe that America has significant global influence and will continue to do so, but few expect that influence to increase. China’s technological achievements, incidentally, play a very important role in shifting perceptions of the country and its global role. The idea that China dominates renewable energy technologies, electric vehicle manufacturing and solar panel production is now widespread not only in China itself, but also in the United States and the EU. On the basis of survey data, ECFR analysts echo the conclusions of Eurasia Group on this point.

At the same time, the 'Trump moment' in global politics appears to be drawing to a close. In many countries where his arrival in the White House was initially greeted positively against the backdrop of declining trust in 'liberal America', there is now clear and growing disappointment. Overall, 'the West' appears in global public opinion as a geopolitical force that has exhausted itself. The new Trumpian America, at least for now, has failed to become an alternative to it. America’s traditional adversaries fear it less than before, while its allies worry about becoming victims of the predatory behaviour of the United States on which they have long relied, the authors of the study write.

In global public opinion, the United States no longer leads the liberal international order or the system of Western alliances, but appears merely as one of the great powers in a post-Western world. People in different countries are inclined to cooperate with both superpowers, the US and China, and do not see the need to choose between them. When pollsters do force such a choice, however, the share opting for China has risen markedly in countries such as Turkey, Brazil and South Africa. It is notable, however, that in Russia this share has, by contrast, declined compared with 2023.

In summary, Trump’s revision of the values of American democracy, liberal modernisation strategies, foreign policy stability and the ideology of soft power has allowed China to occupy many of the vacated niches, presenting itself as a new leader in soft power, technological modernisation and the defence of stability and rules in international relations.

It is possible that this successful drift towards a new image for China, combined with the evident softening of Trump’s stance towards Beijing, has led most analysts to downgrade the probability of a clash over Taiwan and to devote less attention to the issue than in previous years. At the same time, the American Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has placed 'intensified military, economic and political pressure by China on Taiwan, leading to a serious crisis in the strait involving other countries in the region and the United States' in its Level I category, meaning high likelihood and high impact on the world. This assessment does not appear unfounded. In practice, China has made significant progress in 'legitimising' a Taiwan crisis and in preventing the United States from building a broad front of support in the event that such a crisis begins.

Europe under siege — from the East, the West and from within

In one form or another, the crisis on the European continent features as a central theme in most surveys of the key risks and challenges of 2026. Experiencing a deep regression in its own competitiveness, described in detail in a report by former European Central Bank president Mario Draghi (→ Re:Russia: Europe's Rut), Europe stands on the brink of political turbulence, facing external pressure simultaneously from two directions, from the United States and from Russia.

However, Europe’s main problem is not these external pressures but rather internal challenges linked to the growing electoral popularity of far-right parties. While in previous years the far right still remained on the periphery of European politics, a clearly identifiable, though no longer marginal, minority that tended to win elections mainly in smaller European countries, 2025 marked the transition to a new phase. The European political 'centre' is collapsing simultaneously in all three major European powers, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, leaving the continent unable to fill the security vacuum created by America’s retreat, according to experts at Eurasia Group.

Although there will be no major national elections in any of these countries in 2026, their governments now live in anticipation of defeat, which only reinforces the impression of their weakness and the unreliability of their promises. This is a theme taken up by many commentators looking ahead to 2026, including The Economist’s editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, in her column on the year’s challenges. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage’s Eurosceptic Reform Party is leading in polls ahead of local elections. France faces the prospect of yet another government collapse, which could bring the right-wing populist Jordan Bardella to the premiership. In Germany, pressure on the 'firewall' built around Alternative for Germany is steadily increasing, she writes. According to polls conducted in August 2025, 43% of Germans believe that Alternative for Germany will win the next election.

The Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB) in its review formulates what it calls the EU’s 'fundamental trilemma': how to stimulate economic growth, contain public deficits and increase defence investment without resorting to austerity that would further boost support for far-right parties. The discussion of the EU’s next seven-year budget for 2028–2034, which European Council President António Costa wants to agree by the end of 2026, will be another serious test for European politics, notes the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS) in its review of the challenges of 2026. Yet postponing this debate would be even more dangerous.

In the coming year, parliamentary elections will be held in Denmark, Hungary, Slovenia and Sweden. However, it is Bulgaria’s presidential election in November that causes the greatest concern among experts, writes Grégoire Roos in Chatham House's review of risks for 2026. Pro-Russian sentiment in Bulgaria remained strong even during the peak of Western anti-Kremlin mobilisation in the first year of the war in Ukraine, and Bulgaria could become another pro-Russian country in Eastern Europe. At the same time, Hungary’s 2026 parliamentary elections currently look like a rare ray of hope in what euro-optimists see as a bleak landscape. The opposition Tisza party is leading with 49% support, well ahead of Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party at 37%. This is unlikely to reverse the overall trend, but it would at least signal that a rightward shift is not the only possible scenario and that the battle is not yet definitively lost. ECFR experts, in a review tellingly entitled 'The year we stop pretending this is temporary', express cautious optimism that new far-right victories will not trigger any kind of 'continental emergency', and that current European leaders will adapt to democratic erosion as a new condition that must be managed until it can be overcome.

The paralysis of pessimism and the threat of a second front

While the future of support for Ukraine depends on the health of the EU, within Europe Ukraine is increasingly becoming a fault line as a result of political fatigue, Washington’s 'betrayal' and the growing burden of prolonged military and financial assistance, Roos writes. Analysts at the Stimson Center note that Russia is now closer than ever to achieving its strategic objective of splitting the West and weakening NATO. The inability of Europe and the United States to bring peace to Ukraine only strengthens Putin’s resolve to seize new territory and to undermine European unity through further dangerous provocations.

Meanwhile, despite the abundance of debate and decisions taken, Europe remains a long way from developing a new concept of its own security. Although in 2026 Europe will spend more on defence than at any time since the Cold War, it is still far from achieving strategic autonomy, notes The Economist. The central dilemma is whether to invest effort in preserving the alliance with the United States and delay Europe’s own autonomisation, or whether it is necessary to pursue accelerated emancipation. The division over this question, and the resulting inability to formulate a unified strategy, in turn only whet the Kremlin’s appetite for provoking Europe.

The most dangerous front line in Europe is shifting from the trenches of Donbas to the arena of hybrid warfare between Russia and NATO, write experts at Eurasia Group, who assess a direct military exchange between Russia and NATO in 2026 as 'likely, though still unlikely'. The Council on Foreign Relations has placed 'armed clashes between Russia and one or more NATO members' in its Level I category, meaning high likelihood and high impact on the world. This is a new addition to the list, reflecting the growing number of Russian provocations against NATO countries in 2025. Other analysts, including those at ECFR, consider such assessments exaggerated.

A survey conducted in November 2025 in nine EU countries, with almost 10,000 respondents, showed that 51% of those questioned consider the risk of war with Russia in the near future to be 'high' or 'very high'. The distribution of views mirrors Europe’s geography and historical experience. In Poland, which borders Ukraine and Belarus, 77% of respondents hold this view. In France and Germany the figure is just over 50%, while in Italy it is well below one third. At the same time, 69% of Europeans believe that their country is 'unlikely' or 'not at all' capable of defending itself against Russian aggression. This, incidentally, highlights another dimension of Europe’s crisis. Both the current ECFR survey mentioned above and earlier polling show that almost nowhere in the world are Europe’s prospects viewed with as much scepticism and pessimism as within Europe itself.

An overrated black box

Almost all reviews of the coming year also address the issue of artificial intelligence. Most think tanks believe that its growing influence across all spheres of life will be a key source of instability in 2026. In a sense, for many analysts and forecasters, AI has become yet another 'black box', an embodiment of looming irrational uncertainty alongside Trump, Putin and China. Experts at the Danish institute Integrin Dk express the hope that although the hype around AI has now continued for a third year, in 2026 it will finally move beyond simple question answering and begin to 'collaborate' with humanity, strengthening expert knowledge, while labour productivity driven by AI models will start to rise noticeably.

Analysts at Eurasia Group offer a generally sensible and optimistic assessment of AI’s revolutionary potential. Its models are accelerating software development and opening up new avenues of research, while hundreds of millions of people use AI every day to solve a wide range of routine tasks quickly. In the short term, however, AI is unable to meet investor expectations, and its adoption in business is uneven, producing mixed results across different sectors.

Manning and Burrows of the Stimson Center point to the risk of an AI-driven economic downturn. By 2029, global investment in data centres is expected to reach $1.1 trillion, while total AI infrastructure spending could amount to $2.8 trillion. At the same time, many AI pilot projects are failing to report strong results, and further development is constrained by shortages of affordable electricity. All this is fuelling speculation about a new market 'bubble' and reviving memories of the dotcom crash of 2000. Such a scenario would, however, carry an important geopolitical implication, as it would once again highlight the advantages of the Chinese model of 'budget' technological advances rather than overvalued breakthroughs.