Megatrends 2026 And Beyond Ey Global

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Nov 29, 2025, 8:28 PM

Discover the insights you need to make better decisions today, to shape the future with confidence. Private Equity Pulse: key takeaways from Q3 2025 EY helps clients create long-term value for all stakeholders. Enabled by data and technology, our services and solutions provide trust through assurance and help clients transform, grow and operate. Climate change and sustainability services Discover how EY insights and services are helping to reframe the future of your industry.

Executive Summary: Which are the Global Megatrends (2026-2030)? The global mega trends overview below highlights their significant impact on the world’s economy, society, and technological landscape. It is also a roadmap to anticipate their long-term implications on your professional landscape. It allows innovators and business leaders to navigate industry shifts and ensure future success. Industry 5.0 enables smart, human-centric production, while sustainability drives eco-friendly design. The energy sector is pivoting to renewables and carbon-neutral solutions, while logistics is evolving with IoT, blockchain, and autonomous vehicles.

In construction, green materials and modular techniques respond to climate and urban pressures, and pharma leaders are accelerating drug discovery through AI and personalizing treatments. Electric vehicles will dominate roads to reduce emissions and reshape mobility infrastructure, while zero-waste lifestyles and circular business models will become mainstream. Telemedicine will be a standard healthcare service. Smart homes and cities will streamline energy use, transportation, and services. Personalized, AI-powered education platforms will democratize learning and global digital IDs will unlock secure access to finance and government services. How can businesses leverage these megatrends?

Thrilled to share another contribution to EY's Megatrends 2026 report—exploring how emerging technologies are enabling the human-machine hybrid economy and fundamentally transforming how we work, lead, and create value. This research examines the convergence of AI, robotics, and neurotechnology that's pushing the boundaries of human potential and reshaping workforce dynamics across every industry. Key findings from our research: 🔹 Cognitive Augmentation is Here – Human-AI teams are achieving 73% higher productivity per worker. MIT and Johns Hopkins research shows that hybrid intelligence creates superior outcomes in marketing and advertising, demonstrating the power of complementary capabilities. 🔹 Physical Augmentation is Accelerating – The collaborative robotics (cobots) market is growing at 35% annually, reaching $60.6B by 2030. Meanwhile, exoskeleton technologies are expanding from manufacturing into healthcare and logistics, projected to grow from $1.4B in 2025 to $19.7B by 2035—a 30% annual growth rate.

🔹 The Hybrid Workforce Model – By 2030, work tasks will be nearly evenly divided between human-only, machine-only, and collaborative approaches. This isn't about replacement—it's about reimagining roles to harness augmented intelligence where humans and machines each contribute their unique strengths. The implications are profound: we're moving from traditional job architectures to dynamic frameworks where humans manage, direct, and collaborate with AI agents that amplify our judgment, creativity, and impact. Organizations that proactively redesign their structures for human-agent collaboration will unlock greater agility, innovation, and competitive advantage. As we enter this NAVI world (Nonlinear, Accelerated, Volatile, Interconnected), the question isn't whether to embrace human-machine partnerships—it's how quickly we can adapt our leadership models, workforce strategies, and organizational structures to thrive in... Read the full analysis: https://lnkd.in/gQBfeSSX How is your organization preparing for the human-machine hybrid workforce?

Are you augmenting human capabilities or still thinking in terms of automation vs. employment? Special thanks to Chris Yeh, Bryan Cassady, and Terri Horton, for their thoughtful contributions to this piece. #EYMegatrends #AI #FutureOfWork #HumanMachineHybrid #CognitiveAugmentation #Leadership #Robotics #WorkforceTransformation #Innovation Thanks for involving Me. .

Vitaly Golomb ., you asked great questions This article is part of our Investment Outlook 2026: Seeking Catalysts Amid Complexity The investment landscape is being reshaped by evolving megatrends, presenting both challenges and new opportunities for strategic capital deployment. In 2026, we expect economic security to remain a priority focus for nations and corporations. This theme is being amplified by turbulent geopolitics, a new trade order, persistent inflationary pressures, and energy-intensive artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, sustainable investing is maturing with a greater focus on performance.

We favor a focus on themes including renewable energy, grids, energy storage, and companies solving critical pain points, offering cost savings, or providing essential value chain links. After a year dominated by headlines surrounding tariffs and AI capex announcements, we believe economic security will be a prominent theme in 2026, helped by continued corporate resilience as interest rates head lower. Geopolitical flashpoints, NATO defense commitments, and renewed momentum in US and European reindustrialization efforts highlight a global imperative among economies and companies to build resilient supply chains, secure critical resources, and strengthen defense capabilities. In our view, this environment creates substantial opportunities for active managers to identify and capitalize on companies strategically positioned for this shift. Tariffs are fundamentally reshaping global trade flows by incentivizing businesses to prioritize supply chain security, leading to a strategic shift towards shorter, more resilient, and reliable networks. This transformation is not a new phenomenon but has been accelerated by the imposition of tariffs and growing geopolitical tensions.

In response to the increased costs, uncertainty, and risks associated with long-distance supply chains, companies continue to move away from a pure cost-efficiency model to one that values flexibility and risk mitigation. Critical resources, including energy and raw materials, continue to gain heightened strategic importance. Vulnerabilities are starkly illustrated by current global dependencies: China accounts for ~60% of rare earth production.1 Similarly, ~90% of the world’s leading-edge semiconductors critical for AI’s future development are manufactured in Taiwan.2 We believe... But the broad strokes are already at work. Technology will continue to automate and disrupt, globalization will require more political savvy, younger generations will demand accountability and transparency, and industries must tackle climate change. You can think of these manifestations of the primary forces of change—technology, demographics, globalization, and the environment—as constant elements of transformation.

Like waves in the ocean, you can always expect them to be there, but never truly know when they’re going to crash. Most businesses plan for the future by starting in the present, which can lead to a perpetual short-sightedness. If you’re only focusing on the wave that’s directly in front of you, how can you plan to move past the one behind it, and then the one behind that? The EY Megatrends 2020 report proposes a different way to navigate change: future-back strategy. Instead of starting with the present, EY Megatrends offer visions of the future to work backward from. The Megatrends are eight future scenarios, emanating from those four primary forces, which prompt you to reverse-engineer your company’s trajectory.

The report posits how climate change, automation, geopolitics, and Gen Z will shape the world in a decade. So how do you get your company there? EY Megatrends helps C-suite leaders to build resilience, and boards to cultivate a futurist mindset. Work through these six brief but revealing questions and emerge with a vision of your company’s future. This personalized look at the EY Megatrends 2020 report will help you not only better understand the forces of change impacting your company, but will help you see opportunities others don’t. Discover how your company can reframe its future rather than allow the future to reframe your company.

Welcome to the NAVI world - Nonlinear, Accelerated, Volatile, and Interconnected - where complexity and disruption shape the future. The EY Megatrends 2026 series explores eight emerging trends and their impact. The first three articles just launched focus on how people and technology work together, how businesses become more flexible and how productivity is being redefined. Discover insights to help leaders adapt, create value and seize new opportunities. Read more: https://ow.ly/9ALk50XrOjV #ShapeTheFutureWithConfidence #EYAlumni EY helps clients create long-term value for all stakeholders.

Enabled by data and technology, our services and solutions provide trust through assurance and help clients transform, grow and operate. Discover how EY insights and services are helping to reframe the future of your industry. How digital twin technology powers the future at Xcel Energy How Bristol Myers Squibb overhauled working capital to fund its future How St James’s Hospital's journey to cloud transformed cancer care EY helps clients create long-term value for all stakeholders.

Enabled by data and technology, our services and solutions provide trust through assurance and help clients transform, grow and operate. Discover how EY insights and services are helping to reframe the future of your industry. How digital twin technology powers the future at Xcel Energy How Bristol Myers Squibb overhauled working capital to fund its future How St James’s Hospital's journey to cloud transformed cancer care Discover the insights you need to make better decisions today, to shape the future with confidence.

Private Equity Pulse: key takeaways from Q3 2025 EY helps clients create long-term value for all stakeholders. Enabled by data and technology, our services and solutions provide trust through assurance and help clients transform, grow and operate. Climate change and sustainability services Discover how EY insights and services are helping to reframe the future of your industry.

Megatrends 2026 And Beyond Ey Global

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🔹 The Hybrid Workforce Model – By 2030, Work Tasks