With over a dozen thematic tracks and hundreds of participants from more than 30 countries, the 2025 Futures4Europe conference in Vienna is the largest convergence of the European foresight community to date. Notably, it marks a transition from fragmented project-based foresight to a more integrated and sustained foresight infrastructure within the EU’s research and innovation systems. The conference is also a living lab for the kind of futures we want to see: inclusive, reflexive, care-centered, and critically engaged, and thus reflecting the efforts of the Eye of Europe project.
Our gratitude extends to all who contributed to this conference— authors, reviewers, and conveners—for their intellectual generosity and for pushing the boundaries of what foresight can be. The diversity of themes, methods, and perspectives presented here is a testament to a foresight community that is not only growing, but maturing— anchored in practice, but not afraid to question its own foundations.
As you read through these abstracts, we invite you not just to absorb insights, but to engage with them—challenge them, expand them, remix them. Because the future of Europe will be co-created not by prediction, but by participation, imagination, and shared responsibility.
Let this book be an invitation to that ongoing process.
