Let’s dream a little: 2026 could be the year of Good.
Some will say that this is not the most likely scenario and that, given what has happened over the past year, we should expect much worse over the next twelve months. The most likely scenario is that 2026 will be marked by worsening climate disruption, accelerating water shortages in large parts of the world, increasing artificialization of land and food, an expansion of the theater of conflict from Eastern Europe to the Baltic states, more massacres in Sudan and Nigeria, and a worsening situation for women in Afghanistan, Iran and many other countries. We can also expect the global reign of fake news, the open installation of a Nero dictatorship in the United States, using trickery and terror to win the meaningless November elections; we can also anticipate the departure of most American troops from Europe, their landing in Greenland, terrorist attacks on an unprecedented scale, a rise in anti-Semitism on both the left and the right, and the continuation of the criminal and suicidal policies of the current Israeli government. We can expect the dismantling of the European Union to continue, by increasingly nationalistic governments. We can also imagine the likelihood of an extremist victory in local elections in France, and the open rallying of a large proportion of European employers and right-wing liberal parties to the far right, paving the way for a confrontation, in the second round of presidential elections the following year, between two identitarian parties, both national populists, hostile to European construction and pro-Russian.
To this we could add, on a global scale, the acceleration of the evolution of AI until it reaches autonomy from humans, with all the nightmarish consequences we can imagine as early as next year.
All this is perfectly plausible, in fact it’s the most likely.
But it’s not certain. On the contrary, we can imagine, hope and succeed in a completely different 2026:
In the USA, the anti-Trump Republicans could join forces with the Democrats to put a stop to the madness of a president who violates the Constitution more and more every day, and who is increasingly openly surrounded by Russian agents; this alliance could swing the Senate and the House of Representatives to the Democrats, significantly reducing the president’s powers and restoring some of the lost grandeur of American democracy.
In Israel, the center and left parties could win the 2026 elections, send Netanyahu to prison and the religious parties back to their intolerable obscurantism, regaining the soul of early secular Zionism; in Palestine, we can still hope to see courageous, uncorrupted leaders finally eliminate Hamas and the other terrorist forces and return to the path of peace through the two-state solution.
In Russia, we can imagine part of the elite becoming aware of the impasse reached by the suicidal policies of the current leaders, and seeing them force the authorities into a lasting ceasefire; and even a liberalization of the regime, a condition for Russia to finally regain its rightful place in the concert of nations.
In Europe, next year, more and more leaders may at last become aware of the continent’s solitude and finally launch a major program of military and technological sovereignty, in the sectors of the future, while respecting the cultural and democratic identity of each of them, and while enlarging their Union to all the other countries of the continent, including Ukraine and the Balkans.
We can also hope that they will understand that their demographic future depends as much on their housing and family policies as on what they do to seriously and sustainably integrate into their culture and values the foreigners they will necessarily continue to welcome.
In France, democratic parties can win the local elections of March 2026, demonstrating that they still have a large majority in public opinion and that they can push back the identity-based temptations of the far left and far right, ensure the triumph of a demanding secularism and produce credible candidates for the presidential elections the following year; with programs to be drawn up in 2026, taking note of the need to massively reduce the innumerable wastes of public money, unwarranted subsidies to lobbies, useless layers of bureaucracy and intolerable duplication of effort, lightening taxes and reducing deficits, while giving far more resources to all sectors of the life economy, and first and foremost to health, education, healthy food, housing, environmental protection and safety.
Last but not least, we can expect that by 2026, humanity will have discovered and implemented new ways to better protect nature, to promote local agriculture, to eat healthily, to treat and cure hitherto incurable diseases, to reduce pain, to ‘teach with less effort and much better to all the erudition necessary to everyone.
What will separate the year of good from the year of evil?
The same thing that separates, in each of us, cowardice from the will to react to a threat; resignation to the inevitable from its refusal; the naming of scapegoats from the lucid search for a courageous response; surrender to the forces of the world from the decision to rebel against them. Without waiting for disaster to strike before trying to guard against it.
Yes, 2026 can be the year of the Good: you don’t have to wait until you’ve lost a war to join the resistance.