The 2020s were supposed to be a recovery decade. Instead, they became a relay race of crises each handing the baton to the next before the last could catch its breath.
A pandemic collapses supply chains. A war in Europe disrupts energy markets. Droughts parch crops while floods drown cities. Inflation spikes, then AI shocks the job market. By 2026, the idea of a “normal year” feels almost quaint.

The term polycrisis , once academic, has become the defining condition of our age. The IMF, World Bank, and World Economic Forum now use it routinely to describe the interlocking shocks of geopolitics, climate, technology, and society. Every system is colliding with every other.

The key shift is psychological: crisis is no longer a temporary interruption; it’s the atmosphere we breathe.
Governments and businesses can no longer wait for stability before planning. They must plan within instability. In this new reality, resilience isn’t about endurance it’s about adaptation speed. The ability to pivot, repurpose, and reimagine has become the ultimate survival skill.

Across sectors, you can see the mindset shift:

• Companies are rewiring supply chains for resilience, not efficiency reshoring, automating, and diversifying suppliers.
• Governments are embedding scenario planning into policy, preparing for cascading disruptions (from cyberattacks to climate migration).
• Investors are re-evaluating “risk” as the new opportunity space, channeling billions into resilience tech, security, and local infrastructure.

In 2026, the smartest organizations will treat turbulence as a feature of the landscape, not a glitch in it. They will operate with permanent foresight dashboards, rapid response teams, and modular operations that can morph overnight.

The metaphor of the decade isn’t the fortress it’s the sailboat. The fortress resists the storm. The sailboat reads the wind.

And in a world where the seatbelt sign never turns off, those who can harness the turbulence , not just survive it, will define the future.