World Futures Day is a unique 24-hour global conversation on possible futures, pioneered by The Millennium Project in 2014, two years after Humanity+ proposed the idea of a global Future Day. This innovative and participatory futures method is unlike any other: it enables futurists, researchers, innovators, and the general public to engage in an open, worldwide dialogue that moves across time zones — from New Zealand to Hawaii.

📅 March 1st, 2026, will mark the 13th anniversary of World Futures Day. The event is sponsored by The Millennium Project, in collaboration with leading international organizations including the Association of Professional Futurists, Humanity+, Lifeboat Foundation, World Academy of Art and Science, and the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF).

⏱️The event will officially launch at 12:00 noon in New Zealand and will continue hour by hour around the planet, concluding at 12:00 noon in Hawaii.
📌To register as a participant, click here.

Young people should also have a real voice in conversations about the future!

March 1st, 2026 also marks the celebration of the 6th annual World Futures Day – Young Voices (WFD-YV) led by Teach the Future, taking place alongside the 13th World Futures Day convened by the Millennium Project, serving as a reminder that youth-led futures thinking is part of a much longer, shared global effort. During this 24-hour global event, educators, students, schools, activists, and futurists explore collective futures with intergenerational voices from around the world, while remaining committed to ensuring youth perspectives are central to the dialogue.

📌Register here. 

Visit Teach the Future for an overview of the event’s evolution over the years, and explore this playlist featuring conversations from 2025.

📣 YouthDecide 2040 is looking for participants to join our regional workshops and co-create the future of European democracy!

Be part of a one-and-a-half-day immersive workshop where diverse voices come together to imagine and shape resilient, thriving European democracies.

🗣️💬 Through creative, participatory foresight activities, we will explore different visions of democracy in 2040—your perspective matters!

🧭 The wider, the better
Are you a European resident over 18? This call is for you!
We're fostering intergenerational discussions on the future of European democracy, centring youth voices (18-34).

🔓 The call for applications will remain open through May 2025. 

Event takeaways:

The workshop offered a structured journey—reflecting on the past of liberal democracies, examining current research on key pillars like institutions, participation, and media, and exploring possible futures through the lens of four science fiction novels that imagine future democratic developments

• Senior scientist at “Our World in Data”, Bastian Herre gave an alarming as well as reconciling view into the deterioration of liberal democracies worldwide as well as in Europe. Yet, he pointed out that most of our present democracies are built on solid institutions and they are most likely to be resilient against internal and external attacks.
• Michel Debruyne of Beweging.net introduced results from comparative country research from the INVOLVE Democracy project. Among the factors stablizing liberal democracies long-term are the quality of trust in public institutions and policies as well as making participation possible for all citizens. However, when looking at public policies and social benefits, the picture is more ambiguous: while public health expenditure is considered a stabilizing factor, high expenditure in pensions might result in distrust. More definite in destabilizing democracy in a country are corruption and low quality of public transport.
• The RECLAIM project is researching the significance of expression of information disorder and democratic stability. The protection of the public sphere is identified as a cornerstone of democracy. Of similar importance are public service social media as well as a better regulation of social media companies. In his presentation Maximilian Conrad, University of Iceland, also pointed out the significance of the education factor, not only for children but also for adults, including science education and media literacy. Destabilizing factors are, among others, disruptive technologies, fragmented public spheres and distrust in traditional journalism and science.
• In the MeDeMAP presentation, Maren Beaufort, Austrian Academy of Sciences focused on the role of (social) media and stated that traditional information media and pluralism, thinking long-term and endorsing a culture of diversity are crucial in maintaining democratic values. Investigative journalism plays a special role as it uncovers corrupt activities and disguised the foes of democracy. What we cannot expect is a consensus in social media bubbles. Definitely destabilizing liberal democracies is the exclusion of citizens from discourses; and also the suppression of media as well as the lack of self-criticism within journalism. Still open are questions such as: How to prevent democracies dying at the hands of elected leaders—who subvert the very process that brought them to power.
• An outlook into diverse futures of democratic values was presented in the “Literary Quartet”, where four passionate readers of science fiction literature gave their interpretation of four different novels dedicated to the longevity of democratic life in the future. What we can learn from novel like Infomocracy (2016), The Lost Cause (2023), The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), and The Ministry for the Future (2020)? The discussion extracted visions of pluralist and diverse societies where humans can change their identity, experiment with new forms of governance in local communities, where central governments are resolved and where people find ways to cope with climate change by supporting each other.

This workshop is part of a series of “Eye of Europe” pilot activities taking place during 2025, aimed at exploring various futures and their implications for R&I policy.

The workshop was open to a wide audience - experts and non-experts - interested in questions of future democracies.