Megatrends 2026 Explained: The 11 Forces Shaping our Futures
Every few years, the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies steps back from the noise of the news cycle to ask a slower question: which forces are actually reshaping the conditions we all live inside? Its newly released 2026 Megatrends report names eleven of them, from a shifting world order and an inverting population pyramid to the rise of embedded AI, a constrained economy, and the growing power of networks. In this episode, Sean Leahy and Andrew Maynard take a welcome (mostly) AI-free week to unpack what a megatrend actually is, how weak signals build into trends and trends into something much larger, and why the institute's decision to publish its methodology, including the filters every candidate must pass, matters as much as the list itself. Then they test the report the way futurists do, by colliding its megatrends. Trade disruptions run straight into geopolitics, aging workforces into migration, and individualized lives into a hard question about trust. If we choose our relationships rather than inheriting them, do we end up trusting each other more, or less? They explore what happens when private networks start to function like states, why the biotech revolution now stretches from precision fermentation to plant-based toy bricks, and why futures thinking means responding to the world as it is rather than as we wish it were. Megatrends aren't crystal balls, and they rarely move in straight lines. But they may be the closest thing to stability the futures world has, which makes them a good place to start asking better questions about what it will mean to be human in the decades ahead. (Plus: two years of Modem Futura, and a recorder that ran out of room right at the finish line.)
Mentioned in this episode
- Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, Megatrends: The foundations of long-term change (2026), free download: https://www.cifs.dk/read-listen/reports-knowledge/megatrends
- Compass, the magazine of the Association of Professional Futurists, which featured Modem Futura in its podcast spotlight (thanks, Stephen Dupont)
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Modem Futura is a production of the Future of Being Human initiative at Arizona State University. Be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. To learn more about the Future of Being Human initiative and all of our other projects visit - https://futureofbeinghuman.asu.edu
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Host Bios:
Sean M. Leahy, PhD - ASU Bio
Sean is an internationally recognized technologist, futurist, and educator innovating humanistic approaches to emerging technology through a Futures Studies approach. He is the Executive Director for the Future of Being Human Initiative and Research Scientist for the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Senior Global Futures Scholar with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University.
Andrew Maynard, PhD - ASU Bio
Andrew is a scientist, author, thought leader, and Professor of Advanced Technology Transitions in the ASU School for the Future of Innovation in Society. He is the founder of the ASU Future of Being Human initiative, Director of the ASU Risk Innovation Nexus, and was previously Associate Dean in the ASU College of Global Futures.
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