What’s in store in 2026?

It’s 2026, and if any of us were hoping for a calm, restful, peaceful start to the new year, after the turmoil and stress of 2025, we will have been disappointed.

There is a saying “events, dear boy, events”, often attributed to the late British prime minister Harold Macmillan. It’s a way of reminding us that however carefully we plan, or govern, or manage, things can happen suddenly that change everything.

And so spare a thought for the podcasters, myself included, who decided to have a look back at the tumultuous year that was 2025, and a look ahead to what might be making the international headlines in 2026.

Since I and my guests – Emma Farge of Reuters, Nick Cumming-Bruce, New York Times contributor, and Dorian Burkhalter of swissinfo, all wanted a break over the festive season, today’s Inside Geneva was recorded right before Christmas. Before December 29 when the US warned the UN it should “adapt or die”, and before Donald Trump’s astonishing ousting of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

(I hope listeners aren’t too disappointed that we don’t discuss these topics today – fear not, we are right now working on an Inside Geneva special scheduled for next Tuesday, that will examine the implications of Washington’s new approach to the UN. We’ll also be asking whether the US action in Venezuela, which many believe is a blatant violation of international law, could set a dangerous example for other countries to oust leaders they don’t like.)

In today’s episode though, the four of us each chose a story that stood out in 2025, that we all felt we would be reporting on again in 2026. Burkhalter from swissinfo chose the huge cuts to UN funding which we’ve seen this year. As he tells us on Inside Geneva, we knew, once President Trump was re-elected, that there would certainly be a reduction in the US money for UN humanitarian work, but “we just didn’t expect how brutal” it would be.

Now, after the savage dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, USAID, other countries are also cutting back – notably traditionally generous donors such as the United Kingdom and Germany. The consequences are already being felt, and they are, as Burkhalter says “brutal”. The closure of maternal health clinics in Afghanistan, cuts to nutrition support in Yemen, reduction of food aid to people on the verge of starvation in Sudan.

No wonder, as Farge of Reuters points out, it is expected that global child mortality will rise in 2026 for the first time in decades. And all of us on Inside Geneva expect to be reporting, throughout this new year, on the ongoing consequences of those cuts.

Gaza, Ukraine…

Another topic we know will be making headlines, and which Farge chose as her story of 2025, was Gaza. From mass displacement, to deprivation of food, shelter, and medicines, to a declaration of famine, to the conclusion by the UN commission of inquiry that genocide was being committed, Gaza has been, Farge tells us “in the words of so many humanitarians, the most horrific humanitarian crisis they’ve seen in their careers.”

Following October’s ceasefire, the situation has improved only marginally; there is no rebuilding taking place, Palestinian families are huddled in tattered tents in driving wind and rain. Bulldozers to clear rubble are not allowed in, and, as Cumming-Bruce from the New York Times, points out, the thousands of people, many of them children, needing evacuation to treat life threatening injuries, are not being allowed out.

Cumming-Bruce’s story of the year was Ukraine. For a brief moment in November in Geneva, the headlines were about a possible peace deal. The Americans and the Ukrainians were in town, but the deal offered appeared to many to have been written by Russia. Ceding of territory still in Ukrainian hands, an amnesty for those who committed war crimes. These are not the stable foundations on which to build a sustainable peace.

And, as Cumming-Bruce tells Inside Geneva, the focus on those fairly unrealistic peace negotiations completely overshadowed the continued relentless Russian attacks on Ukraine. ‘All the talk of peace eclipsed the humanitarian toll of this conflict; the large numbers of Ukrainians hunted down by drones.’

…Climate

My own story of 2025 was very firmly based in Switzerland, but with big implications internationally; climate change. In late May I scrambled to get to the village of Blatten, which had been wiped off the map by the combination of a thawing glacier, and an unstable mountain, in which the permafrost was also thawing. There had been houses in Blatten, on that exact spot, for eight centuries. In a matter of seconds they were gone, buried beneath millions of tonnes of rock and ice.

There is no point pretending anymore that climate change is not creating risks for us, that it will not force changes to the way we live, that some, like the people in Blatten, will lose their homes, others, in floods South East Asia, will lose their lives.

And yet climate change has dropped of the political agenda, President Trump told the UN General Assembly that the science around global warming was “the greatest con job ever”. No one from the US attended the COP 30 climate conference, instead, the US is focussed on fossil fuels, now tapping into Venezuela’s oil supplies too.

…and Trump

And finally of course, no look back at 2025 could be complete without mention of the President of the United States. “Love him or loathe him,” says Cumming-Bruce, “he is the most consequential president this century.” His love for executive orders and by-passing Congress is not just upending America’s democratic system, it is shaking, some might say destroying, the international rules based order.

His approach to migration has delighted some, but shocked many more. Stay tuned, by the way, for an Inside Geneva special in the first quarter of this year, devoted to migration, and the challenges faced by the new UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Barham Salih of Iraq, a former refugee himself.

So in 2026, President Trump is sure to be in our coverage too, in fact he already is, as he blithely violates the UN Charter so that he can in his own words “run” Venezuela. Join us on Inside Geneva for a fascinating discussion. And let us know what other topics you’d like us to discuss – write to us at [e-mail]

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