The World Economic Forum has identified ten technologies expected to reach widespread application within five years, spanning personalized cancer vaccines, quantum drug discovery and new approaches to energy management.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report 2026, its 14th annual edition, was released today at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, produced with Frontiers, a scientific publisher. The report identifies technologies at the point where research advances are beginning to translate into large scale practical deployment.
Three of the ten address medicine. Personalized messenger RNA (mRNA) cancer vaccines, designed around the specific genetic mutations in an individual patient’s tumour, could significantly reduce the chance of cancer returning after treatment. Exosome drug delivery uses particles that cells produce naturally, engineered to carry therapies to precise locations inside the body including the brain, which has historically been one of the hardest targets for conventional drugs to reach. Quantum simulation for drug discovery models molecular behaviour with far greater accuracy than existing tools allow. That could compress the time it takes to identify viable drug candidates.
Three more cover energy and materials. A new approach to energy grids would allow buildings, vehicles, factories and data centres to supply stored electricity back to the grid rather than only drawing from it, improving resilience and making better use of locally generated renewable power. Direct lithium extraction pulls the battery material from brine in hours rather than months, cutting land and water use. Passive radiative cooling materials cool buildings and equipment by reflecting sunlight and releasing heat into space without electricity, a development with particular relevance for hot climates where conventional cooling drives heavy energy demand.
Two technologies target environmental problems that have resisted solution for decades. New destruction methods for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) now offer a practical route to removing these synthetic chemicals from water supplies, soil and living tissue, where they have accumulated and resisted conventional treatment for decades. Precision fermentation uses microorganisms to produce food ingredients, chemicals and pharmaceutical materials, potentially reducing the resource requirements of conventional manufacturing.
The final two technologies address digital infrastructure. World models allow artificial intelligence (AI) systems to build integrated representations of physical environments from multiple data sources, improving how machines predict and respond to real world conditions. Cryptography built on lattice mathematics provides data protection that resists attack from both today’s computers and quantum machines, which cybersecurity researchers expect will eventually reach the power needed to crack conventional encryption methods in what the field calls a Q-Day scenario.
Stephan Mergenthaler, Managing Director of the WEF, said “together they tell a broader story about where innovation is heading,” adding that the technologies could challenge assumptions about how the world responds to food insecurity, climate change and disease.
Across the list, the report identifies a common direction: systems that can operate without centralised infrastructure, bringing energy management, treatment and production closer to where people live. The report cautions that whether any of these technologies deliver on their potential will depend on infrastructure readiness, regulatory adaptation, manufacturing capacity, investment and public trust.
The report was produced with additional input from the Dubai Future Foundation. The Dalian meeting runs from June 23 to 25 under the theme “Innovating at Scale” and brings together more than 1,700 participants from business, government and civil society.
