Intergenerational Foresight 2026

Foreword Today’s leaders are increasingly required to make decisions whose consequences will unfold far beyond electoral cycles, investment horizons and leadership tenures. Climate instability, demographic shifts, rapid technological change, and rising inequality are driving nonlinear and long-term transformations with impacts that are unevenly distributed between geographies and generations. Navigating these challenges demands more than short-term fixes; it requires leaders to steward uncertainty, complexity and accountability with a long-term perspective. Strategic foresight has emerged as a critical response to this reality. Unlike forecasting, which extends existing trends forward, strategic foresight creates a structured space to explore multiple plausible future and shows how today’s decisions expand or constrain the futures that remain possible. Strategic foresight has helped organizations anticipate change and build resilience, but today’s persistent challenges reveal the limits of conventional approaches and make clear the need for foresight to evolve in both method and perspective. Foresight must evolve, broadening whose perspectives count and how futures are framed in decision-making. The Future50 Initiative was created to meet this need. In partnership with the World Economic Forum’s Global Foresight Network and Global Shapers Community, it explored how bringing generations together can strengthen foresight and lead to more legitimate, durable long-term decisions. Instead of relegating emerging leaders to the sidelines, Future50 gave them equal footing with seasoned experts to tackle real governance and organizational challenges around the world. This handbook captures the insights that emerged from that work. It does not offer a definitive model, nor does it seek to replace established tools or methodologies. Instead, it contributes to the ongoing evolution of the field by articulating intergenerational foresight as an approach to long-term decision-making and governance, one that broadens who participates in shaping the future, rebalances power and perspective across generations, and strengthens the connection between authority and consequence. At the centre of this handbook are a set of regional provocations developed through the Future50 Initiative, illustrating how intergenerational foresight operates in practice, and how it can generate insights that conventional approaches may overlook. This handbook is an invitation to leaders, institutions, and practitioners to reflect on how foresight is practiced today and consider how it can better serve both present and future generations. The choices we make now, and who is included in making them, will define the futures ahead.Natalie Pierce Head, Global Shapers Community, Foundations, World Economic ForumBryonie Guthrie Manager, Strategic Foresight, Intelligence and Foresight, World Economic Forum Intergenerational Foresight: An Approach for Long-Term Responsibility in GovernanceMarch 2026 Taylor Dee Hawkins Managing Director, Foundations for Tomorrow; Advisory Board Member, Global Foresight Network, World Economic Forum; Champion, Future50 Initiative, World Economic ForumFatima-Zahra Ma-el-ainin Psychologist and Social Transformation Strategist; Co-Lead, Future50 Initiative, World Economic Forum Intergenerational Foresight: An Approach for Long-Term Responsibility in Governance 4