Inside Davos 2026: Key insights – and the best and worst of the forum

The 56th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting convened in Davos from 19-23 January 2026 under the theme “A Spirit of Dialogue.” It did so amid a convergence of pressures rarely experienced simultaneously: geopolitical fragmentation, rapid technological acceleration, and escalating climate and environmental risk.

illuminem was on the ground, as the exclusive partner of the Financial Times, speaking on several stages, curating the agenda of many delegations, and, above all, publishing the most trusted and widely read Guide at the World Economic Forum (accessed by roughly one in three mobile phones in Davos!). As Vanity Fair aptly noted, if you need direction in Davos, “Davos’ biggest parties are on illuminem.”

In this in-depth commentary, we offer both a clear-eyed review of the Forum’s most critical discussions and our insiders’ take on the houses, events, and speaker line-ups that truly shaped the week.

I. Our Insiders’ Awards for the Best and Worst of Davos 2026

With the support of our community and the many delegates we supported in Davos, here is our most anticipated take on Davos 2026:

🏆 Best Speech On Stage: Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney perhaps became “the leader of the free world” after delivering a historic speech: “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu”. He called on small and medium powers to unite around shared values

 🏆 Best Speech Off Stage: Bart De Wever, Belgium’s new Prime Minister, quickly became one of Davos’s undisputed stars – witty, approachable, and refreshingly open. In a memorable aside, he told the illuminem delegation how he once forgot his notes in the Trump Office – notes devoted entirely to Belgian beers, prepared for an upcoming event – leaving everyone to wonder what the U.S. Secret Service might think Belgium’s top priorities are…

 🏆 Best House For Inclusion: TPC House – a true revelation of the Forum. A new and large pavilion at the heart of the Promenade, animated by the unique spirit of Frederick Tsao and Sook Yee Tai – a success in agenda, inclusion, line of speakers, and attendance from 8am until 2am, every day!

 🏆 Best House For Speaker Lineup: Axios, the American new media, provided top-tier voices on all of Davos’ most strategic topics – from Bank of America‘s CEO to McLaren F1’s CEO, spot on!

🏆 Best New House: Anthropic – a distinctive new presence for a brand positioning itself at the centre of Davos, ahead of its hyped IPO

🏆 Best House For Its Organising Team: Financial Times – consistently kind, professional, and an outstanding partner to illuminem

🏆 Best House for Food: Uber nailed it on hospitality – top-tier baristas fueling early Davos morning cappuccinos, and legitimately great pizza served after 10 pm. A simple but powerful statement: when it comes to taking care of people on the move, Uber knows the journey matters as much as the destination

🏆 Best House For Tea: Kurdistan House offered one of the most memorable pauses of Davos – a simple cup of tea turned into a powerful experience. Served in a setting evoking the mountains of this territory, it felt grounding, generous, and deeply intentional. It was a quiet statement: a nation shaped by resilience and landscape, claiming its place on the Davos global stage

🏆 Best House For Coffee: Ukraine House set itself apart with exceptional specialty coffee sourced from war-marked Lviv. According to Delia Fischer, who suggested us this award, it was more than fuel — it was a pause, a reset, and a catalyst for meaningful exchanges throughout the week.

🏆 Best House For Most-clicks On the illuminem’s Guide: Bloomberg, which has become a cornerstone of the Davos agenda year after year

🏆 Least-Clicked House On the illuminem’s Guide: Wipro – a large presence and budget, but with likely limited ROI and weak event traction

🏆 Best Concept: the European Renaissance, staged by Paloneo’s Ludolf von Schonig and Adrian Fopp – a timely and much-needed vision amid geopolitical change, supported by an impressive roster including BlaBla Car’s CEO Nicolas Brusson, European Innovation Council’s President Michiel Scheffer, and Antler’s founder Magnus Grimeland

🏆 Best Surprise On Stage: Elon Musk, who arrived unannounced on the agenda, for once avoided political controversy and delivered a rarely enlightening talk on robotics and the future of space tech

🏆 Best Participatory Event: Climate Narratives, hosted by Renat Heuberger, the co-founders of South Pole (the world’s first climate unicorn) and the unmissable Michaela Reimann, delivered one of the most memorable evenings of Davos. Two empty chairs on stage invited the audience to step in and share raw, powerful stories – turning the 200+ spectators into participants. The energy peaked when the CEO of a major Danish energy company took the stage, challenging the room on whether “positive narratives are betraying the seriousness of the climate crisis.” The night closed on a high: a standout party, the announcement of Zurich Climate Week, and a symbolic gift for every participant – a crystal, a tangible reminder to carry our story forward

🏆 Best Premiere: The world premiere of the Nature Positive Film, hosted by Marco Lambertini (fmr. Executive Director of WWF) with Paul Polman (the most discussed CEO of Unilever) and André Hoffmann (Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum and Vice-Chair of Roche), and expertly moderated by Gemma Parkes, rolled out a true green-carpet moment – adding yet another highlight to an already eventful Davos

🏆 Best Artistic Performance: We know, you probably expected the Avicii tribute concert at Swedish Lunch to take this one. Instead, it was Aloe Blacc who stole the show at Goals House on Tuesday – remixing his iconic “I Need a Dollar, a Dollar is what I need” into “I Need a Euro”. A perfectly timed wink, against the backdrop of frosty US-EU relations in Davos

🏆 Best Startup Pitch: At Thursday’s closing reception of the Human Change House, a startup pitch energized the Forum. The most applause (and interest) went to Smaranda Jaun‘s story of Composite Recycling, offering a powerful glimpse into a future where even the hardest-to-recycle materials can be made circular

🏆 Most Controversial Dinner: Wednesday’s dinner hosted by BlackRock’s Larry Fink was marked by the most inappropriate speech by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who, without limits, sought to belittle the European delegates, who largely honorably exited the room en masse following the example of Christine Lagarde, in the uncomfortable silence of the host

🏆 Most Buzz For Least Results: Every senior Davos attendee knows that the Wednesday night show is at McKinsey’s party at the Ameron… The invitation’s polite suggestion to arrive “after” 11pm, the amazing choreographic music and artistic performances (loved by the delegations supported by illuminem), and even the legal disclaimer reminding each guest that the evening is worth Franks 350 per person – everything was there to make it iconic… Still, the conflicting schedules of the US delegation (“the kings” of this Davos), along with many European business leaders (split between Belgian House beers and the Italian Dinner at Belvedere), African leaders (dancing at the Hard Rock Hotel), and Asian delegations (notably enjoying Singaporean drinks at TPC House) – meant the event fell just short of true “must-attend” status

🏆 Best Sustainability Panel (you saw this coming from us): a wholly female and intimate CSO chat between Ocean’s Alliance founder Daniela Fernandez and the CSOs of Breitling (Aurelia Figueroa), BlaBla Car (Belinda Saunders), and Mercer (Cara Williams). Sincere and insightful, in a time when sustainability has to restart with its best people

🏆 Best Davos Gadget: a Ferragamo-branded white beanie gifted to participants of The Female Quotient – perfectly Italian, and unmistakably suited to Davos temperatures. Chapeau!

II. The Core: AI ascendant, capital central, geopolitics normalised

More than 60 heads of state and government gathered alongside close to 3,000 leaders from business, finance, civil society, academia, and the media. By both scale and concentration of influence, Davos 2026 ranked among the most attended meetings in the Forum’s history. This surge in participation reflected not necessarily optimism, but urgency – a recognition that global systems are being reshaped faster than institutions are adapting.

Across formal sessions, private meetings, and the informal diplomacy of the Davos Promenade, three dynamics stood out: the consolidation of artificial intelligence as the dominant economic force, a recalibration rather than retreat of sustainability, and a renewed focus on how power and capital are exercised in a world defined by uncertainty.

AI everywhere: from agenda to atmosphere

Artificial intelligence was not simply a topic at Davos 2026, it was the organising principle. Panel titles, executive briefings, and closed-door investor sessions revolved around AI’s implications for productivity, labour markets, security, and competitiveness. Outside the Congress Centre, the message was even more explicit.

Along the Davos Promenade, brand activations and national pavilions reflected a sharp concentration of influence. Tech companies such as Meta, TikTok, Anthropic, Coinbase, and Stripe dominated visibility, while robots and humanoid systems – once experimental – moved through public spaces as symbols of technological inevitability.

Our CEO remarked to Vanity Fair: “The promenade shows who wants to be seen, and who intends to play the global game.” European companies, by contrast, were conspicuously underrepresented, highlighting widening gaps in technological scale and ambition. AI was widely framed not only as a growth engine, but as a geopolitical asset – shaping access to capital, redefining strategic autonomy, and increasingly intersecting with sustainability and resource strategy.

Capital markets: the enduring priority

If AI defined the future, capital defined the conditions under which that future could materialise. Calls to “unleash” capital markets echoed across Davos, reflecting persistent concerns over constrained liquidity, regulatory fragmentation, and uneven investment flows.

Executives and asset managers emphasised that innovation – particularly in AI, energy systems, and infrastructure – will depend less on technological readiness than on the ability of capital markets to price risk, reward long-term investment, and provide scale. The tone was pragmatic rather than ideological: capital will move where signals are clear and frameworks credible.

Geopolitics: loud outside, managed inside

While geopolitical tensions dominated global headlines throughout the week, they were notably less central in Davos individual discussions. Rather than debating fault lines, business leaders focused on operational adaptation. Regionalisation of supply chains, regulatory divergence, and political volatility were treated as baseline assumptions rather than existential threats. Many participants expressed cautious confidence that global business has learned to navigate uncertainty and no longer waits for geopolitical stability before acting.

III. Sustainability repositioned, not rejected (our deep dive)

As you rightly expected from the leading sustainability media and data platform, illuminem was deeply engaged in the numerous sustainability debates across the houses of Davos. The signal was nuanced: sustainability may no longer be the headline, but it is certainly not retreating.

Indeed, the World Economic Forum’s risk assessments continue to rank climate and environmental risks as the most severe long-term threats to global stability. And behind closed doors, sustainability leaders expressed little doubt about direction, only about pace and framing.

The physical world: the roots to structural advantages in the new geopolitical order

Dr. Martin R. Stuchtey – founder of SYSTEMIQ and The Landbanking Group – argued that sustainability is increasingly a source of structural advantage, not reputational risk. And this comes from three new orders being set up, linked to use of energy, access to resources, and dependencies to nature. 

What dominated Davos 2026 was not the language of sustainability, but a harder recognition: competitiveness, security, and capital formation are being redefined by the physical foundations of the economy.

The first agenda is the Joule Order. Energy is now a security variable. Divergent U.S. and Chinese strategies – molecules versus electrons, markets versus manufacturing depth – reflect different geopolitical postures. Super-demand from AI, data centres, and electrification is compressing timelines. Power systems, grid capacity, and energy intensity are no longer downstream of growth; they shape it, and increasingly shape foreign policy.

The second agenda is the Element Order. Critical minerals and materials have moved from efficiency questions to strategic constraints. Circularity is rediscovered, not as virtue but as necessity: copper recycling rates remain well below demand growth, while material dissipation continues across value chains. Geology, not trade theory, is setting the boundaries of industrial strategy.

The third agenda is the Ground Order. Soil loss, ecosystem degradation, and water stress are now treated as security risks. Rising uninsurability, asset repricing, and growing attention from central banks signal that nature has entered the core of financial stability debates.

For Davos 2026, stop googling sustainability. Start asking how capital survives in a stressed physical world.

Sustainability moves closer to the business core

As “sustainability-native companies”, whose businesses are inherently aligned with climate outcomes, arrive at the Forum, we report here the insights from BlaBla Car, France’s first unicorn and now the world’s leading player in shared travel, with 150 million passengers traveling by carpooling.

Belinda Saunders (CSO) explained: “At the core of BlaBlaCar’s model is avoidance. We are shifting millions of users from individual car journeys to shared mobility, and helping millions of tons of CO₂ in the process. We strongly believe this is how entire sectors need to approach the transition: delivering the end-user service consumers expect, but redesigning how we utilise the infrastructure and assets we depend on. For us it means structural, not marginal approach to sustainability. Helping shape the future of low-carbon mobility, while being able to deliver affordability and increased access to mobility for our members. Sustainability and business aren’t separate objectives, but an interconnected strategy”.

Yet operating at the frontier brings its own challenges. “The problem is that most existing environmental methodologies fail to properly recognise carbon avoidance, even when it is real and measurable“.

Aurelia Figueroa, Chief Sustainability Officer at Breitling, offered another example: “We decided early on to make sustainability attributes tangible in our products. When we started to develop our first traceable watch, the Superchronomat 38 Origins, we focused first on creating a beautiful, high-quality product. And the result is that our watch was a tremendous success, as clients could see and feel the direct connection with Breitling’s legacy. Ultimately, sustainability is a key contributor to product attributes related to quality and desirability, bringing our values to life and offering customers yet more meaning.”

Beyond individual company examples, Davos highlighted a deeper transition underway in sustainability leadership. With sustainability now expected to inform core business decisions rather than sit alongside them, many organisations are confronting a mismatch between legacy sustainability structures and emerging strategic demands. This shift – from reporting and positioning toward value creation and risk management – framed many of the conversations in Davos. As Philipp Petry, Partner at Impact Strategies, observes: 

“After years of growth and ambition, sustainability has entered its awkward middle phase. The moment where enthusiasm meets spreadsheets and boards start asking for business contributions. That tension surfaced clearly at Davos: if sustainability doesn’t make economic sense, it doesn’t scale”.

“The problem is that most sustainability teams were built for a different phase. They focused on regulation and stakeholder engagement – keeping organisations on the right side of requirements. What’s missing now are the skills to turn sustainability into something that genuinely shapes commercial decisions, e.g. connect climate or nature risks to pricing, investment cases, supply-chain redesign, or product strategy. Sustainability has to move from a moral frame to a strategic one. Not because ethics no longer matter, but because they aren’t sufficient on their own.”

Renat Heuberger, co-founder of South Pole and Terra Impact Ventures, highlighted a concept that captured a broader sentiment. “A panel with Heads of State introduced the concept of the ‘backlash of the backlash,’ arguing that sustainability, being the top long-term risk, will return to the top of the agenda, reversing the trend in an even greater manner than the original sustainability backlash did“. A call for continuing to build long-term resilience?

The Reflection – Power, Wealth, and Multicapital

Beyond companies, strategies, and CSO mandates, Davos 2026 also concentrated something less visible but equally consequential: unprecedented levels of economic, social, and political power in the hands of a relatively small group of actors. With record numbers of family offices, private wealth holders, unicorn founders, and advisors present, the Forum increasingly functioned as a marketplace not just of capital, but of influence, access, and agenda-setting.

It was this broader conception of capital and its implications for impact and responsibility that Falko Paetzold, Founder of the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth (CSP) and Managing Director CCSP at University of St.Gallen, addressed in one of the most candid reflections of the week:

“When we engage with wealth holders, we see a recurring pattern. Most think of their resources purely in financial terms. In reality, they dramatically underestimate the power of their relationships, knowledge, and reputation in driving lasting, systemic change. This is truer at the WEF than anywhere else.

Wealth holders achieve far greater impact when they deploy their full portfolio of capitals – combining financial resources with relationships, knowledge, and influence.  André Hoffmann exemplifies this. His economic capital funds environmental initiatives while granting him access to people and spaces that help attract additional investment and amplify impact for causes he champions. 

Lisa and Charly Kleissner recognised that their position as wealth holders provided unique convening power. They leveraged their social capital to build Toniic and TWIST – global networks that have catalysed billions in impact investment. Lisa herself noted, “relationships have been the most precious commodity we have, and it’s what has attracted capital to come”. 

“Walking through Davos, you witness the convergence of financial power, global networks, hard-won expertise, and influential platforms.”

See you next year, or this year?

Coming to a close, we share a smile after countless encounters on the streets of Davos, where almost every friend proudly displayed our Davos guide… It’s truly an honor to support our community with the right insights, at WEF and beyond, wherever sustainability must move forward.

https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/inside-davos-2026-key-insights-and-the-best-and-worst-of-the-forum