The 10 Technologies Set to Reshape the World by 2031
Every year, the World Economic Forum’s “Top 10 Emerging Technologies” report identifies the scientific advances poised to move from lab curiosities to global game-changers. Now in its 14th edition, the 2026 report is the product of rigorous scanning—across academic fields, patent filings, funding landscapes, and the scrutiny of a multidisciplinary advisory council. The result is not a list of cool ideas but a shortlist of breakthroughs that experts believe will achieve mainstream adoption within five years and, in doing so, redefine how we power our homes, treat disease, produce food, and secure data.
The Technologies Transforming Our World
The following ten innovations—presented in no ranked order—cut across energy, materials, health, artificial intelligence, and cryptography.
1. Everything‑to‑Grid Energy
Buildings, electric vehicles, and rooftop solar panels are no longer passive consumers of electricity. With bidirectional charging, advanced battery chemistries, and smarter control systems, they become active nodes that store and feed power back to the grid. This “everything‑to‑grid” approach stabilizes networks during demand spikes—imagine a New York heatwave—and eases the strain that AI data centres are already beginning to exert. New semiconductors and lithium‑sodium batteries make distributed storage a practical tool for resilience.
2. Direct Lithium Extraction
Today, most lithium comes from vast evaporation ponds in high‑altitude deserts like Chile’s Atacama, a process that can take up to two years and relies on a highly concentrated supply chain: China refines 62% of global lithium, with Chile and Argentina contributing 13% and 11% respectively. Direct lithium extraction (DLE), however, pulls the metal from brine in hours, recycles the water, and works in modular units that can be co‑located with battery manufacturing. DLE promises to democratise lithium supply, though low lithium prices—down over 80% since 2022—may slow investment.
3. Passive Radiative Cooling Materials
A paint that cools itself without electricity sounds like science fiction, but passive radiative cooling materials do exactly this. Applied as coatings, films, or fabrics, they emit heat directly into deep space, bypassing the atmosphere. In urban heat islands (0.5–4°C hotter than rural areas), such materials can cut a building’s cooling energy demand by up to 40%. A UK company has even developed a cable coating that keeps power lines cool enough to carry more current. The technology is equally promising for heat‑stressed schools, factories, and low‑income countries where air conditioning is a luxury.
4. PFAS Destruction
Per‑ and polyfluoroalkyl substances—PFAS—are “forever chemicals” built around one of the strongest bonds in organic chemistry. They have been found in Arctic ice, rainwater, and the bloodstream of almost every person tested. Until recently, the only option was containment. Now, techniques like electrochemical oxidation can break the carbon‑fluorine bond, turning a permanent pollutant into harmless by‑products. Governments with contaminated land and water are likely first adopters, opening the door to reclaiming sites that were once untouchable.
5. Precision Fermentation
By giving microbes such as yeast a genetic instruction set, precision fermentation produces proteins and fats identical to those derived from animals. Whey protein, egg components, and cosmetic ingredients can now be brewed in bioreactors instead of relying on livestock. With the global population projected to hit 9 billion by 2050, this technology relieves pressure on land, water, and emissions. The first products are already on supermarket shelves, yet scaling will require careful management of the disruption to traditional agricultural communities.
6. Exosome Drug Delivery
The human body already possesses elegant couriers—exosomes—that shuttle messages between cells. Scientists have learned to load these tiny membrane packets with therapeutic cargo, instructing them to deliver drugs to precise addresses, including across the notoriously difficult blood‑brain barrier. Clinical trials are underway for pancreatic cancer, Alzheimer’s, and long‑COVID. Because the body recognises its own couriers, rejection risks plummet, making exosome delivery a quiet revolution in precision medicine.
7. Personalised mRNA Cancer Vaccines
A doctor biopsies a tumour, reads its unique mutations, and manufactures a custom‑built vaccine in weeks. This is the promise of personalised mRNA cancer vaccines, which flip the blockbuster drug model on its head. Early treatments costing over $100,000 per patient are already within reach for wealthy healthcare systems, but hybrid “off‑the‑shelf plus personal” approaches could broaden access. The potential shift—from sledgehammer chemotherapy to a needle‑sharp, individualised strike—remains one of the most hopeful prospects in oncology.
8. Quantum Simulation for Drug Discovery
Nine out of ten drug candidates fail in clinical trials, often because conventional computer models rely on approximations of molecular behaviour. Quantum simulation models molecules atom‑by‑atom using the laws of physics, showing exactly how a drug candidate will fold and lock onto its target. This could slash the failure rate, change the economics of the pharmaceutical industry, and breathe life into treatments for rare diseases that have long been ignored for lack of a viable market.
9. World Models
Today’s AI learns largely from text, but world models ingest sensory data—video, depth, pressure, motion capture—to build an internal understanding of how objects interact. Much like a toddler dropping a spoon to learn gravity, these systems develop a gut‑level grasp of physical reality. The upshot: robots that adapt to ambiguous factory‑floor situations, climate models that genuinely understand storm dynamics, and autonomous vehicles that navigate the chaos of a San Francisco street.
10. Lattice‑Based Cryptography
Quantum computers, when they mature, will crack many of today’s encryption methods. Adversaries are already “harvesting now, decrypting later.” Lattice‑based cryptography provides a quantum‑safe alternative, hiding data inside a mathematical fog—a huge multidimensional grid filled with random noise. Even a quantum computer gets lost. Moreover, techniques like homomorphic encryption allow hospitals to train AI models on 300,000 patient records without ever exposing the underlying data. The US has already embedded lattice‑based methods into its quantum‑safe computing standards, signalling a global convergence.
The Three Pillars That Turn Breakthroughs into Reality
Scaling a technology demands far more than clever lab work. The WEF’s 14‑year archive reveals three recurring success factors. First, all the surrounding pieces must be in place—mRNA was identified in 2014, but a delivery system didn’t emerge until 2018. Second, someone must take the first bet: oncologists embraced expensive liquid biopsies when they had nothing else, and South Australia backed the first grid‑scale battery after a power crisis. Third, government or commercial forces must create a pull—PFAS destruction thrives where clean‑up is mandated, and lattice‑based cryptography advances where national standards are set.
Emerging Themes: Personal, Local, and Efficient
Stepping back, three through‑lines emerge from this year’s cohort. Technologies are becoming personal—cancer vaccines tailored to an individual’s tumour, not population averages. They are becoming local—lithium extracted next to the battery plant, protein produced in an urban bioreactor, energy balanced at the neighbourhood level. And they are about doing more with less—cooling without electricity, feeding billions without clearing forests, destroying forever chemicals instead of merely containing them. These shifts hint at a future where production and place reconnect, and where resilience is built into the systems on which daily life depends.
Criticisms
- The slow pace of global grid modernisation is criticised, with policy bottlenecks impeding the rollout of vehicle‑to‑grid and everything‑to‑grid energy solutions.
- Investment in direct lithium extraction is seen as hampered by volatile commodity prices, despite the urgent need to diversify the lithium supply chain.
- Lack of mandatory building codes for passive radiative cooling materials is lamented, especially in regions where heatwaves already claim lives.
- Government funding for PFAS destruction is deemed inadequate given the scale of contamination and the decades of inaction by chemical manufacturers.
- The agricultural lobby’s resistance to precision fermentation is pointed out as a potential brake on a technology that could dramatically reduce land and water use.
- The pharmaceutical industry’s continued reliance on the blockbuster drug model is questioned, when personalised therapies could become the backbone of oncology.
- International coordination on quantum‑safe encryption standards is called out as dangerously slow, leaving sensitive data vulnerable to harvest‑now‑decrypt‑later attacks.
- Regulatory frameworks for exosome‑based therapies are noted to be lagging, delaying clinical adoption of a delivery system the body already trusts.
- The environmental toll of traditional lithium‑brine ponds in the Atacama Desert is highlighted as an ongoing injustice that direct extraction could mitigate, if adequate investment were forthcoming.
- Data‑sharing policies that could unlock the full potential of homomorphic encryption are criticised as overly cautious, stifling cross‑border medical AI collaborations.
