The Rise of the Future: What Prospects for Science, Research and the Public?

This paper discusses the increasing importance of futures thinking around the world, particularly in the context of Europe, which is lagging behind other regions in the institutionalization of futures research. The key points are:

• The emergence of futures thinking: The focus on futures studies is increasing significantly worldwide, driven by the combination of acceleration and uncertainty creating a demand for multiple futures.
• Investing in future literacy: Recently, numerous reports and educational programs on future studies have appeared, indicating a growing interest and investment in understanding and preparing for future scenarios.
• Europe lags behind in future studies: Despite its historical role in conceptualizing history and developing technology, Europe lags behind in developing future-oriented institutions and approaches, which has led to a technological and innovative deficit.
• Need for systematic investment in the future: Experts agree that Europe needs to systematically invest in future studies in order to improve its global competitiveness and innovative capacity.
• Key aspects for future development: Seven central aspects for effective futures research are proposed, including the scientific exploration of futures, the social negotiation of visions of the future and the acceptance of ideas for the future by the public.
• Dealing with populism through future discourse: We suggest that engaging in future discourse can counteract populism by providing a platform for democratic dialog and debate about the future.
• Establishment of a European Institute for Futures Studies: It is proposed that an Institute for the „Future of Humanity“ be established in Europe to promote innovative thinking about the future and encourage a constructive and interdisciplinary approach.

The intrusion of the future into social ecosystems

We are currently experiencing a massive increase in the importance of the future – across the entire world. This has to do with the combination of acceleration and uncertainty. Their combination has become a characteristic of our era – probably beyond 2030. In the resulting ecosystems of volatility and openness, the call for the future is multiplying rapidly. Contemporary answers are turning into the coexistence of different futures – in the plural – usually faster than desired. Ultimately, they are only connected by their growing urge to change into the unknown. They thus convey an increased demand for social change with a strong dispersive effect in all areas of society. The „new futures“ with their urge to destroy and build want to be seen together in their drifting apart and convergence so that they remain manageable and become the positive object of work and design.

Growing investment in structured debate

Some are better equipped to deal with this constellation than others. In the first half of 2025 alone, more than 100 reports on „futures“ were published by countries, think tanks and private institutions. These include such long-term – and at the same time practical – groundbreaking studies as the Dubai Global 50 Futures Opportunities Report, the EU Forward Look and the OECD-OPSI Anticipatory Governance Guidelines Report. Training programs in future skills are causing an international sensation. They are also providing a breath of fresh air in the academic sector. In universities such as Arizona with the College of Global Futures; in Saudi Arabia with the Master in Futures Studies and the Center for Futuristic Studies; in Dubai with the Dubai Future Foundation, the Dubai Future Forum and the Dubai Future Experts Program for executives in business, administration and government; in Finland with the Finland Futures Academy, the Finland Futures Research Centre, the Master in Futures Studies and the PhD program in  Studies, Futureswhich operates as a network of six universities; and in South Africa with the Future Africa Campus and Future Africa Week. Of course, these are just a few selected examples among many others. New futures laboratories such as the United Nations Futures Lab systematically use anticipation to reconnect the Global North and Global South – for example in the 2025 report „Futures Thinking and Strategic Foresight in Action: Insights from the Global South“. And hybrid collective reports at the intersection of various training and skills programs as well as sector analyses attempt to see the outlines of a common whole. They aim to locate the decisive turning points and innovations at the intersection of different futures. One example of this for 2025 was the report by futurology and analysis company Opus Research on the rise of voice AI – a rise that, according to analysts, will particularly characterize the year and will have an extensive impact in the coming years.

The overall scene is extremely dynamic. Groups with serious aspirations for the future are joining forces – such as the „for the Future“ Scientists (Scientists4Future, S4F). Cities with a positive and active vision of the future are autonomously connecting across their governments to achieve global goals together by 2050 – such as in the 1000 Cities Initiative for Sustainable Development. Long-term development programs are being agreed – such as the International Decade 2024-35 Science for Sustainable Development. And public administration conferences on the topic of the future are becoming more frequent – such as the „Anticipatory Governance“ conference in Trento in May 2025. An increasing number of countries are investing in the growing international landscape of the future – usually with the aim of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The idea is to attract global capital to invest in the anticipation of real futures, usually including new technologies, by demonstrating their own future know-how as convincingly as possible. Conversely, these new technologies are then used to generate anticipation know-how, which is publicly displayed to attract new capital. The hope is that this will keep the cycle going – and ultimately turn into an upward spiral. For some players, this is now working well – especially for the Arab states, the USA and China.

Europe must catch up

And Europe?

The very continent that invented the future and technology in the first place, not least because of its eschatological and instrumental world views, is not leading the way in the trend towards institutionalizing the handling of futures. On the contrary: it even lags far behind – in terms of practically all parameters that count in an international comparison. In addition to self-critical taboos about seeing the big picture in order to avoid conjuring up totalitarianism, the lack of in-depth examination of futures is primarily due to Europe’s traditionally strongly normative and regulatory approach to development. The aim is to regulate development in advance, before it occurs. In international comparison, this comes across as bureaucratic, security-oriented, conservative and not very experimental. With these characteristics, the European approach does not really fit into the flexible, volatile and ambivalent 21st century. This has contributed to Europe’s – now considerable – backwardness in technology, innovation and time-building. The responsibility cannot be blamed on individual nations alone. It also lies in outdated mechanisms of joint decision-making. The „fundamental problem with the future“ was recently highlighted by the two status reports on the competitiveness of the European Union by Enrico Letta and Mario Draghi in April and September 2024. Both referred to the cross-connection between openness to the future and futurology, which is now central to the dynamics of all sectors. This includes, in particular, the interdependence of future competence, economic competitiveness and cultural attractiveness (soft power).

In summary: Today, future think tanks and training programs in future skills are emerging across the globe to promote prosperity and competitiveness through anticipation. Some of these are publicly or semi-publicly funded; many are already privately competitive. Most operate with artificial intelligence methods, blockchain, new sensor technology, big data and other methods of mass data integration for increasingly precise, variable and dynamic multi-option anticipation of futures. More and more of these initiatives combine sectoral with transversal and holistic approaches to increase efficiency through a sophisticated balance between „long-termism“ and immediate applicability.

However, the majority of this – increasingly transnationally networked – institutionalization of the future has so far taken place outside of Europe. Apart from a few exceptions such as the Future Lab at the LUISS private university in Rome and projects such as the „Future Ecosystem“ of the Italian Association for Sustainability ASVIS, which in reality often lead a shadowy existence, the academic sphere of design and analysis (policy) in particular is lagging behind international development – behind the Arab states, China and the USA, but now even behind some African countries.

Catching up in many areas

The backlog does not only apply to investments in the institutionalization of the future. It also applies qualitatively and with regard to the development of methodological and content-related pioneering models. Some cases of historical symptomatology are counter-indicative and tend to make people shake their heads. Harvard University, for example, is considered a pioneer in the institutionalization of futures – since the beginning of the millennium, it has had not one, but numerous programmes, including, for example, the Digital Futures Consortium (until 2010), the Remodeling Futures Program, the systematic integration of „futures“ into the leadership programme and the teaching of decision-making and problem-solving. As part of the dispute between US President Donald Trump and the elite Harvard University, in May 2025 the German government offered Harvard the opportunity to establish a „German Harvard in exile“ for its students abroad because of the „diversity and openness“ in Germany. In the USA, this approach was not primarily seen as science diplomacy, but rather as an attempt at appropriation and arrogance in the comparison of social and educational models. It not only ignored the differences between the university systems – and, in Harvard’s case, the associated business models! – but was also an insulting choice of words for Harvard because it indirectly implied the university’s defeat. The fact that the German academic ecosystem was not asked about this could be read as an indirect sign that in some decision-making contexts, it is better to deal with unlikely external offers from pioneers of the future in order to signal international political correctness and democratic model pupilhood than to build globally attractive institutions of the future through hard work that can raise the profile of the location on their own.

Seven central aspects

Against this backdrop, the conclusion, with which the majority of experts in most development sectors agree today, is clear: it is high time for Europe to invest in the future independently, institutionally and systematically – and to scientify futures. This is because futures are changing their character as they become a scientific topic. Whereas in the past they often focused on speculation about possible developments in sectoral areas, today the debate is turning into an analysis and anticipation effort of a systemic nature. In the coming years, the focus will be on seven central aspects:

• Firstly, research into the future. This can be achieved by combining individual methods from three areas: systems theory since the 1970s, futures studies since the 2000s, and generalized methods of the social sciences in general. Contemporary future exploration combines all three – and thus becomes a driver of innovation in both qualitative and quantitative social research. In the process, „future“ forms a welcome „natural“ link between the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, which also dynamizes the scientific system. The individual methods – which can be further expanded and hybridized with each other – include: horizon scanning, trend analysis, cross-impact analysis, weak signals and wildcards analysis, the futures wheel, the Delphi method, scenario planning, causal layered analysis (CLA), the three horizons framework and backcasting. New combinations of these and other methods are constantly emerging and combine with design methods such as contextual policy analysis.
• Secondly, it is about the social negotiation of competing visions of the future. The future is already becoming one of the most important issues in post-postmodern societies because it is becoming ever more present and is naturally divided along ideological, class-oriented and interest-based lines. The various groups live partly in bubbles and must enter into dialogues in order to democratize ideas about the future. The future thus becomes an antidote to the law of disintegration of highly networked post-formal communities: the law of „structural disconnectivity of highly complex societies“ (University of Vienna, Florian Rötzer).
• Thirdly, it is about the acceptance of futures. People need their own strategies to go along with visions, ideas, plans and implementations. In democracies, the future cannot function without the acceptance and co-ownership of people – whereby their fears, dreams and hopes are what count first and foremost. They must be better taken into account in process participation as a bio-socio-psychological nexus that is central to all individual aspects.
• Fourthly, from this perspective, it is about working on the specification of social imagination – in other words, the democratic elaboration of what is now called „imagination politics“. The point here is that people’s expectations of the future are becoming increasingly important for their voting behavior and their political attitudes. They must therefore not be left to the populists. Instead, imagination politics should be developed actively and participatively for progressive agendas – for example in the sense of the „imaginal politics“ approach (Chiara Bottici, Victor Faessel).
• Fifthly, it is about fundamentally reforming, making and dynamizing politics with futures. Anyone who talks today about disenchantment with politics and angry citizens (Uffa Jensen) would actually have the recipe in mind: „Futures make politics“ now often sounds better than „Politics makes futures“. Especially when future policies are not limited to fantasies and promises, but create institutions and work. The future should not become an ideology. Instead, it can in turn soften ideologies, make them more dynamic and provide them with bridges in order to create new centers. This is precisely because it does not exist itself – and is therefore not experienced as a direct competitor to the interests of ideological presences.
• Sixthly, it is about future casting and futures staging – unavoidable in the age of digital media and highly competitive in the attention economy. In other words, the effective presentation and staging of as yet undefined futures. It is about attracting and self-awareness of free interest by means of visualization, haptization and other clarification methods in order to promote individual inspiration and active participation.
• Seventhly and finally, at the intersection of the other six aspects, it is simply about contemporary innovation and innovation policy – about embedding both better and more precisely in possible, expected or desired processes, situations or spaces.

Anyone who integrates these seven aspects and organizes them into an efficient education, training and skills programme will be well prepared for the future.

Three tasks

However, there is some homework to be done beforehand – and also in parallel. Among these, three side tasks stand out in terms of their immediate importance for the institutionalizability of futures.

• Firstly, there needs to be a public debate on education and training policy. The changing social perspectives and demands on education, training and skills should be the central topic. The topic of the future provides a platform for reforms in the education and training sector which, by its very nature, tends towards daring rather than insisting on the familiar.
• Secondly, „Future“ can and should be used to engage with populism more actively than before. The – undeserved! – The – undeserved! – dominance of the populists for years now stems from their dominance in the politics of imagination, because the democratic parties of reason have underestimated or neglected this in terms of its systemic effect.
• Thirdly and finally, from the perspective of the future, more attention needs to be paid to Europe’s transition zones and intermediate spaces. Their creative potential and receptivity to future discourses is particularly high due to the daily encounter of cultures, languages, traditions of experience and habits. Systemic engagement with futures makes it easier to create generative spaces of „knowledge diplomacy“ in transitional regions between nations: because different cultural potentials and approaches can be combined dynamically and co-creatively via the topic of the future. Why? Because the future challenges all sides to develop. In addition, the future is usually discussed less controversially than the present, precisely because it does not yet exist and therefore appears less immediately dangerous for the individual.

The perspective: For a European Future of Humanity Institute

What does this mean for the outlook?

As one of the richest communities in the world with an actively and consciously transnational organization in the form of the European Union, Europe should set out to play a leading role in the institutionalization of the future. Prosperity will be secured in the coming years by establishing future competence – so stable that it can constantly renew itself without losing its continuity. This will have beneficial consequences in the medium to long term, both scientifically and economically and politically, if it is carried out consistently from the outset in quality networking. Globally visible forums such as a European Future Forum in Germany could ensure additional attention for the innovation location and attract new talent at a high level.

The first steps in this direction have already been taken. For example, by mapping existing anticipation approaches in Europe – which should strengthen the emerging intra-European network of future initiatives. An exemplary approach to this was, for example, the report published in May 2024 by the EU-funded platform „Futures4Europe“: „Showcasing Perspectives: A Stocktaking of R&I Foresight Practices in Europe“. Based on such „big picture“ status surveys, the maxim now applies not only to the elites, but increasingly to the entire population: competence is the key to the future – and the future is the key to competence. The prospects for prosperity, stability and security depend on how we approach the future: spontaneously or systematically, triggered or prepared, uncoordinated or organized, in the short or long term. Europe is well advised to systematically tackle the future today in order to be prepared for tomorrow.

An integrative macro approach to this could be the establishment of an independent „Future of Humanity“ institute on a continental European scale. It would be the only such institute after the globally influential Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, which closed in April 2024 after 20 years due to internal disputes and personal scandals. Globally networked at the level of excellence, a new, historically second Future of Humanity Institute could attract interest and create dynamic added value. Its characteristics should be a constructive-humanistic, constructive and multi- and transdisciplinary view of current and potential futures. This would be a unique selling point that, in the sense of an immaterial kit, would be different from Oxford, where a clearly transhumanist approach and, ultimately, an increasingly specific risk-impact-oriented assessment dominated.

One task of a continental European Future of Humanity Institute could be, not in the last place of its multilateral tasks, the experimental search for a language for futures that is, if not new, at least actively innovative. It would be a language that, like the future itself, moves beyond orthodoxy and incorporates post-formal, meta- and non-traditionalist paths. Why? Because „the future“ and thinking about „the future“ cannot be congenially grasped in traditional patterns due to the nature of the subject matter. In many respects, the future is the opposite of tradition, predetermination and formalization. A contemporary language for futures should be accompanying, non-assuming, appreciative, respectful and inclusive, but above all comprehensible, event-oriented, illustrative, poetic and creative. The search for – and turn to – such a language is the trend of the times. Today, more and more centers for „post-traditional“ are emerging in various fields of knowledge and research, for example in the medical and security sectors. Leading the way for many other sectors, the United Nations established the „Center for Non-Traditional Diplomacy“ (UNTRAD) in the diplomatic field in 2022 – with the aim of finding new ways of exploring the future of language and communication in a collaborative, cross-ideological and post-bureaucratic way. This points the way for the institutionalization of futures. The linguistic and communicative re-testing of futures can create learning experiences with reference to the „tacit knowledge“ that determines the deeper layers of the collective unconscious and its expectations for the future.

There are great opportunities in all of these aspects. It is time to take a positive view of the future instead of leaving it to the apocalyptics. A specifically continental European Future of Humanity Institute would have to consciously define itself in the field of tension between historical solidity and creative experimentation and realize the creative balance between the two as a core characteristic. The time for its foundation is not later, but now.