Today’s children are growing up in a world that is more uncertain than at any time in recent memory. The accelerating pace of technological change, shifting geopolitical landscapes, climate and environmental crises, and evolving social contracts are converging to create a world marked by volatility. In 2026 and the years to come, that looks set only to deepen.
Within this turbulence lies both opportunity and responsibility: the responsibility to act equitably so that every child can survive, grow, learn, and thrive, and the opportunity to reimagine how we collectively protect, empower, and invest in children.
Against this background of growing uncertainty, important questions lie at the core of this edition of UNICEF’s Prospects for Children: Global Outlook 2026: how can public, private, and social systems be steered to withstand volatility and provide the support children need to flourish? What are the right choices to be made today to bend the trajectory toward inclusion, resilience, and opportunity for every child?
The articles in this year’s Global Outlook provide foresight‑informed analyses of key issues shaping children’s lives today. After a year in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered the mainstream ever more, the impact of this technology on children’s rights is a recurring theme.
Dive deeper into the prospects for children in 2026
AI – connecting the dots.
Children are already among the earliest adopters of AI, regularly using AI-powered chatbots, learning platforms, and interactive tools. But beyond individual use, AI is also increasingly permeating classrooms, clinics, social protection systems, EMS, ems and even the labour market.
As UNICEF Innocenti’s work has shown, AI holds both promise and peril for children’s rights: from improving access to quality services for children, such as personalised learning, to greatly increasing the risk of children’s exposure to online exploitation and violence.
Also, already reshaping labour markets, with immediate implications for households’ incomes and, in the longer term, for children’s work prospects. With AI and automation shifting demand for skills, many families are likely to face job losses or to rely more on precarious “gig” work. This will make incomes more volatile, limiting families’ ability to provide children with nutrition, schooling, and care.
Our response must be twofold. One, we need to build shock‑responsive systems, including in social protection and active labour policies, to cushion families during transitions. Two, in parallel, we need to equip children and adolescents with foundational literacies, digital and AI fluency (beyond basic literacy), and school‑to‑work pathways, while also strengthening critical thinking, socio‑emotional skills, and safeguards forwell-being.g This is about not just equipping children to survive the digital future, but to shape it.
These issues are urgent everywhere. Countries with a high proportion of children and youth, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, must act swiftly and decisively. So should aging societies, where in the coming decades children will account for an ever-smaller share of the population in many societies, as The State of the World’s Children 2024 showed. The risks are policies and political decisions that increasingly marginalise children. Everywhere, governance must be proactive and child‑centred, and that is especially true for the governance of AI and digital infrastructure: ethical design requirements, transparency and explainability, independent audits, and safety/privacy by default must be mandatory principles for all child‑facing systems.
The choices we make today will determine whether AI amplifies opportunity for children or deepens exclusion. UNICEF’s recently updated Guidance on AI and Children lays out a coherent blueprint for AI governance and systems that maximize opportunities, mitigate risks, and eliminate harms for children. Simultaneously, efforts must ensure that data practices, government platforms, education reforms, and labour market transitions all work with and for children.
Uncertainty, inequality, and a fragmenting world
Uncertainty is the new normal. Three major trends – in geopolitics, public funding, and climate and the environment – are reinforcing each other, creating cascading impacts that shape the lives of children and fragment the systems they rely on.
Geopolitics: Resurgent nationalism and rising military spending
A resurgence of nationalism and hardening geopolitics is reshaping both domestic budget priorities and international relations. Rising military spending often crowds out investment in children. The normalization of militarized responses creates sustained humanitarian crises and risks embedding cycles of displacement and deprivation. The consequences are stark for children, disrupting their education and exposing them to violence and family separation, with potential for long-term scarring of healthand well-being.g
Zero-sum thinking between security and social investment is unsustainable.
Zero-sum thinking between security and social investment is unsustainable. Peacebuilding, prevention, and the inclusion of children’s voices in dialogue and peace processes must become integral to policy agendas. International and national financing institutions should recognize that human security for children, including safe schools and resilient health systems, is foundational to stability everywhere.
This recalibration of state priorities directly feeds the second dynamic: when defence takes precedence, financing for children’s services is fragilized.
Undermined public funding for children
Funding for children’s services is under unprecedented strain. National budgets face competing priorities; multilateral coordination is stressed by political fragmentation; unpredictable funding streams jeopardize essential services and undermine continuity, particularly for marginalized children; and humanitarian needs outpace available resources. This fragility is compounded by broader economic and geopolitical uncertainty and by the fragmentation of financial and trade ecosystems.
The consequences are visible in many areas of children’s lives, including, as The State of the World’s Children 2025 showed, in the persistence of childhood poverty.
Sound policy design requires factoring in uncertainty through buffers and redundancy, contingency financing, shock-responsive systems, and measurement frameworks that track not only outputs but also resilience and equity for children and their communities.
If left unaddressed, this volatile environment compromises the speed and fairness of climate transitions, the third dynamic, and risks locking children into more hazardous futures.
Climate and environment: Transitions in danger
The climate crisis is already altering children’s lives through food insecurity, health and disease burdens, displacement, and educational disruption. The prospects for a transition to a sustainable economy are being undermined by polarization, fiscal pressures, and new energy demands, including from AI data centres.
Children must be central to climate adaptation and mitigation, supported by resilient schools and health systems, safe mobility, shock-responsive child-sensitive social protection, and green skills for the economies they will inherit. Child and youth participation and leadership strengthen legitimacy and innovation. Just transition principles can ensure that climate action reduces, not reproduces, inequality affecting children. Conversely, delayed climate action raises costs and entrenches inequities that children bear first and will bear the longest.
Delayed climate action raises costs and entrenches inequities.
Every child has the right to the essentials of a dignified life: nutritious food, clean water and air, safe schools, and the skills to lead a fair and sustainable future. Denying them these foundations is both unjust and profoundly short-sighted.
Navigating volatility for children
Just as the dynamics outlined above are deeply interconnected, a systemic, child-centred response must also bring together multiple areas, including governance, financing, and anthropology.
By weaving these threads together, uncertainty can be transformed from a negative force that fractures children’s lives into a catalyst for resilient, inclusive systems. The volatility of our world is undeniable. So too is our capacity for transformative change. Foresight calls us to move beyond reactive crisis management toward proactive strategies that anticipate risks, harness opportunities, and deliver impact at scale.
Two enablers will determine success: Rebuilding trust in institutions, expertise, and evidence, which is essential for collective action in an era of misinformation; and aligning governance, financing, and technology with child outcomes through approaches that are affordable, scalable, and accountable.
The future for children will be shaped by the choices we make in 2026 and the years ahead regarding AI and data governance, sustainable funding, peace and conflict prevention, climate action, and ethical technology. We can help shape a world where every child can flourish – resilient, empowered, and ready for what can still be a brighter tomorrow.
