This session will identify major trends and challenges in world affairs in the field of geopolitics, world economy, political trends, AI and technology, and peace building. The year 2026 reveals a profound inflection point: the liberal world order led by the United States is approaching its end, and the world is transitioning toward a new order whose contours remain uncertain.

Symptoms of this transition are visible across regions. Great power direct intervention has re-emerged as a policy instrument to project influence, most visibly in Venezuela and in the sustained confrontation with Iran. At the same time, sanctions, oil control, and sovereign debt have evolved into tools of geopolitical leverage as much as instruments of economic policy. Artificial intelligence is redrawing competitive advantage across economic, military, and technological domains, while the global architecture of peacebuilding is under real strain as ceasefires prove fragile and diplomatic channels are repeatedly tested by escalation.

Taken together, these developments illustrate a world in flux. This session opens FPCI’s Global Town Hall by surveying these currents across geopolitics, the world economy, political trends, technology, and peacebuilding and by asking what they reveal about the current state of the international system. More importantly, it invites us to consider what can be done to brace for the next world order and how societies, institutions, and policymakers should prepare for the turbulence ahead.