10 Break-Out Sessions
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55th St. Gallen Symposium 2026
Theme & Programme
The St. Gallen Symposium promotes cross-generational dialogue on the most pressing issues of our time. Every year, we focus our annual main symposium, our year-round dialogue initiatives and our publications on a core theme.
This serves to inspire our cross-generational community of leaders of today and tomorrow to reflect and act upon key questions in five thematic areas, related to business, governance, sustainability, technology, and the social and generational contract.
This serves to inspire our cross-generational community of leaders of today and tomorrow to reflect and act upon key questions in five thematic areas, related to business, governance, sustainability, technology, and the social and generational contract.
Disrupted Age: Theme of the 55th St. Gallen Symposium
We live in a time of major disruptions — yet three stand out for their pace, transformative impact, and global reach. In recent years, the world has changed more profoundly than many expected — leaving businesses, institutions and individuals struggling to keep up, often unclear on how to respond. These disruptions offer both opportunities and challenges – not only in their nature, but also in how societies experience and address them.
Technology
AI and automation are transforming business, politics, and daily life at record speed—raising ethical dilemmas while driving breakthroughs in digital infrastructure, clean energy, and productivity.
Geopolitics
Shifting alliances, economic uncertainty, and rising defense budgets are reshaping the global order as traditional structures weaken and new actors emerge.
Demography
Rapid ageing in the Global North and youth surges in the Global South are straining welfare systems, shifting migration patterns and productivity.
Deep dive into the major disruptions of our time
This section examines how the three intertwined forces — AI-driven transformation, shifting geopolitics, and seismic demographic change — are disrupting economies, institutions, and societies, and what their convergence means for the decade ahead.
Technology
AI and automation are transforming every aspect of life — from politics to medicine, from media to production processes. Business models, public discourse, and the world of work are being redefined at record speed, often outpacing social adaptation and regulation. While this wave of technological progress raises countless ethical dilemmas and fuels societal anxiety and uncertainty, it also unlocks enormous potential. Breakthroughs in AI, robotics, and smart digital infrastructure will be essential to addressing the great global challenges of our time — critically including the green transition — by better managing scarce resources, optimizing energy systems, and accelerating the deployment of clean technologies.
Geopolitics
The global operating model is reshaping as alliances shift and economic uncertainty grows, driven by a retreat from free trade. As the U.S. recalibrates its global role, traditional security guarantees and the global trade order are being challenged. Europe is rearming under pressure and seeking a joint way forward in the meantime. The BRICS bloc is gaining geopolitical weight, and Africa is claiming greater agency in global resource politics. India is asserting its rise, while China seeks to regain momentum. Defense budgets are surging — adding to already high global inflationary pressures — deterrence doctrines are being tested, and interstate conflicts, once thought to be fading, are now reappearing.
Demography
The pace of population ageing is accelerating across much of the Global North, while fertility rate driven youth surges are reshaping the Global South, predictably shifting the centers of global productivity and economic potential in the coming years. In many advanced economies, retirees make up an increasingly large share of the population compared to the active workforce, putting pensions, healthcare systems, and fiscal stability under increasing pressure. Aging voter demographics will continue to shift political priorities. Demographic imbalances will further drive migration — projected to rise by 11% by 2030. While these developments demand critical reforms in some countries, they present significant development opportunities for others — albeit with rising emissions as a side effect of population growth.
These disruptive forces do not act in isolation — they reinforce and accelerate each other and are here to last.
The slowdown of global free trade is forcing regions to rethink their economic models. To remain competitive, they increasingly depend on technological innovation and international talent. Migration shifts can help meet labour shortages — but also strains cohesion where integration falters.
The race for technological leadership is intensifying. Nations compete for chips, critical resources, and digital capabilities — not only to secure a geoeconomical advantage, but to address demographic realities such as shrinking workforces and rising healthcare costs.
Yet while geopolitical, technological, and demographical shifts unfold in months, democratic processes — election cycles, legislation, judicial review — move in years. The result is a widening gap between the speed of disruption and the capacity to govern it leaving businesses in uncertainty.
Together, these converging forces define a disrupted age — one where opportunity and risk rise in tandem.
Programme of the 55th St. Gallen Symposium on
“Disrupted Age”
Speakers at the 55th St. Gallen Symposium on
“Disrupted Age”
