ORF releases Global Quarterly-‘Navigating Megatrends 2026,’ seeks to foreground perspectives from Global South
New Delhi : The Observer Research Foundation has released its quarterly on ‘Navigating Megatrends for 2026. The six domains covered in this inaugural issue–geopolitics, defence and security; geoeconomics and trade; technology; climate and energy transitions; agriculture, health, and urbanization; and education, skills, labor, and immigration, together capture the major faultlines and forces shaping international politics and domestic transformations alike.
ORF scholars engage with these megatrends as lived realities and argue that Megatrends do not unfold in isolation; they are mediated by leadership, institutions, and ideas.
in an essay titled ‘Geopolitics, Defence and Security-Turbulence Ahead’ Dhruva Jaishankar, Executive Director of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) America, along with contributions from Pratnashree Basu, Kartik Bommakanti, Lindsey Ford, and Kabir Taneja, outlined five major geopolitical megatrends expected to shape 2026 in the domains of geopolitics, defence, and security, amid turbulence from the re-election of US President Donald Trump.
Setting out this assessment, Jaishankar highlighted the impacts of Trump’s policies, including high tariffs disrupting global trade, US retrenchment from multilateral arrangements, and efforts to end conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza while showing reduced restraint in using force, such as strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and operations in Latin America. He noted that China and Russia are expected to continue expanding their “no limits” partnership declared in 2022 through new technological and operational coordination, despite US attempts to engage them separately.
In practical terms, this includes military-technical cooperation, joint exercises with wider geographical remit, and evidence of Russia training Chinese paratroopers, accelerating China’s military modernisation goals. The brief also cited Venezuela’s assertive claims over Guyana, alignments in Argentina and El Salvador with Trump-era policies, and Brazil and Peru’s economic ties with China, alongside the global race for critical minerals engaging Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru.
“The global race for critical minerals is set to engage Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru,” the research observed. Placing these developments in a broader context, the paper emphasised that while other dynamics such as the war in Ukraine, conflicts in Africa, and developments in the Middle East persist, these five trends, the Russia-China axis, the continued growth of bilateral and minilateral arrangements, a more turbulent Latin America, competition in new technological domains and regions, and the reemergence of nuclear weapons, are likely to constitute major trends to monitor in 2026.
In their research paper, A year of rebalancing-Geoeconomics and Trade, Anit Mukherjee, Dhruba Purkayastha, Arya Roy Bardhan, Srijan Shukla, and Jhanvi Tripathi argue that countries of the Global South with large critical mineral reserves such as Indonesia and Mexico will leverage their access to natural resources in exchange for lower tariffs and greater investment in domestic processing and manufacturing sectors, capitalizing on the US-China geoeconomic competition to their advantage. The geoeconomic impact of tariffs is expected to play out in two key ways: an increase in trade across the Global South and greater attention on the corridors and infrastructure that connect them.
The research states that the Global South countries will need to guard against the flood of imported manufacturing goods from China, safeguarding their national interests through industrial policies aimed at protecting and creating jobs. At the same time, it presents an opportunity for the Global South to take advantage of the turmoil. The rules of rebalanced globalization remain in the process of being defined. How Global South countries respond to Washington and Beijing with their own geoeconomic initiatives in 2026 is likely to shape the future global economic order.
