The Rise of Futures – What Does It Mean for Europe?

di Roland Benedikter

Abstract

The contemporary historical passage is characterized by the unprecedented rise of futures, which takes on very different forms. Anyone who asks about the future of digital culture, educating and learning must also ask, therefore, about the very nature and perspective of contemporary futures themselves. This article presents a brief overview and some suggestions on this topic.

Keywords: Futures, Policy, Education, Learning, Heritage, Europe

Today, we are witnessing a striking increase in the importance of the future – across the entire world. This rise has to do with the combination of acceleration and uncertainty. Both have become characteristics of our era. They combine to form uncertain acceleration and accelerated uncertainty. As a result, the dynamics of social ecosystems are becoming increasingly unpredictable, despite new anticipation tools such as artificial intelligence, chatbots and big data processing. This applies to both open and closed systems.

This was, exemplary for many other similar observations, the main message at the European Forum Alpbach 2025 in Austria (Alpbach.org 2025), which was founded in 1945 and in 2025 reached its 80^th edition, which makes it one of the oldest and most renowned thought festivals of the continent. The celebratory edition was dedicated to the future of Europe. The question was: how can Europe be recharged with energy, enthusiasm and dynamism?

The unanimous answer was: with more future. In today’s situation of transition, the demand for anticipation is also growing in Europe. The call for knowledge about the future, foresight and anticipation of the future is multiplying all the more rapidly the less the end of crises is in sight. This is because the need for stability and security is growing. Due to differing ideas about the future, the future (in the singular) becomes the coexistence of different futures (in the plural). These futures are often conceived in contradictory ways by different social groups and actors. Especially in democracies, they need to be viewed together – in their divergence and convergence – so that they remain malleable and a factor of social cohesion and solidarity.

However, some actors are better positioned than others to deal with this situation of “future proliferation”. Since the beginning of the 2020s, many countries, companies and think tanks – in both democracies and non-democracies – have established institutions for anticipating the future, while others have done so to a lesser extent or not at all. But practically all types of institutions are now working on approaches, perspectives and ways of dealing with futures. The focus is unanimously on the trinity of possible, expected and desirable futures. These are three pillars on which a common house must be built – in the fourfold field of tension between normative, adaptive, affirmative and experimental approaches of a methodological, social and political nature.

At the same time, it is particularly important to actively cultivate criticism and self-criticism in the field of the future. For futures are, by their very nature, particularly evocative and thus also inherently propagandistic in character. This makes them susceptible to being appropriated by leading imaginaries in an overall more fragile, fragmented and polarised culture – which, despite all pro-active attitudes, must always be questioned in public rationality from a socio-political perspective.

In the mid-2020s, there is frenetic international activity in this complex and highly dynamic field. In the first half of 2025 alone, more than 100 reports and analyses on “futures” were published by states, global organizations, non-governmental organizations, think tanks, research institutions and civil society organizations. These include pragmatically groundbreaking studies such as the 50 Global Future Opportunities Report (Dubai Future Foundation 2025), the EU Foresight Report (EU Agenda 2025) and the OECD-OPSI Guidelines Report on Anticipatory Government (OECD 2025). They largely agree that territories, communities and groups can no longer be governed solely by planning ahead, but also by anticipating, while also taking into account unpredictable and unplannable events.

The reasons for this are obvious. Because planning proves to be too short-term in the face of rapid and profound change and, at the same time, impossible even when conceived for legislative periods, existing procedures and instruments of medium-term strategic foresight (Foresight) (BMBF 2025) are being supplemented by possibilities such as long-term anticipation (Poli 2017) of options and future formation (UNESCO 2021). These instruments include, to name but a few, horizon scanning, trend analysis, cross-impact analysis, weak signals and wildcard 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 are linked to theoretical frameworks such as contextual policy analysis (Cairney 2019). When implementing these instruments – selectively, in combination or in an integrated manner – most approaches in current world reports focus on the socio-political question of how to involve people in shaping the future in order to strengthen both sides. Behind this lie both liberating (democracies) and appropriating (autocracies) strategies, interests and intentions.

Training and event programs in future competence are also causing an international sensation in the mid-2020s. They are bringing a breath of fresh air to the academic, educational and training sectors. Examples include universities such as Arizona State University with its College of Global Futures (Arizona State University 2025), Prince Mohammad bin Fahd University in Saudi Arabia with its Master’s in Futures Studies (Prince Mohammad bin Fahd University 2025a) and the Centre for Futuristic Studies (Prince Mohammad bin Fahd University 2025b), or in Dubai with the Dubai Future Foundation (Dubai Future Foundation 2025), the annual Dubai Future Forum (Dubai Future Foundation 2025b) and the Dubai Future Experts Program (Dubai Future Foundation 2024) for leaders in government, administration and business. In Finland, there is the Finland Futures Academy (University of Turku 2025a), the Finland Futures Research Centre (University of Turku 2025b), the Master’s program in Futures Studies (University of Turku 2025c) and what is probably the world’s best doctoral program in futures studies (University of Turku 2025d) in Turku and Helsinki; in South Africa, the Future Africa Campus (University of Pretoria 2025a) and Future Africa Week (University of Pretoria 2025b) at the University of Pretoria; in Italy, Italy’s first international master’s program in futures studies (which is often oversubscribed every year): the Master in Previsione Sociale (University of Trento 2025) (social foresight) at the University of Trento, in Denmark the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies CIFS (CIFS 2025) and in Austria the Center for Futures Design (C-FD 2025) in Linz, which serve as role models.

Finally, at the intersection of analyses and training programs, international collective reports attempt to see the common whole of the emerging new. The aim is to identify the decisive turning points and developments of various futures. Among these, to name just one example, was the 2025 public-private cooperation report on the implementation of audio AI (Hansen 2025) (Voice AI) – i.e. artificial intelligence focused on hearing. It was classified as a temporarily particularly significant step into the future that will have a transversal impact on various areas and shape this year.

All these reports, training activities and transversal initiatives have a pioneering claim in terms of content, but also in psychological terms. They expect to be imitated because their mere existence trains future competence and thus attracts reputation. In this context, the mindset of the growing number of emerging states that do not align themselves with either the global bloc of democracies or that of autocracies (Benedikter 2022), but instead cultivate “active non-alignment” (ANA) (Benedikter 2024a), is becoming more important in the political hinterland of the question of the future. It is this: helping to shape the international discourse on the future attracts capital. Capital finances the discourse on the future. If handled cleverly, this creates a hermeneutic circle that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when concrete innovation is added. The whole thing corresponds to the character of capital when it is seen as an active social force. For (borrowed) capital is nothing other than (immaterially abstracted) anticipation of the future: namely, the ability to do things before one could actually do them. The entire process of future discourse-capital-innovation works as long as the cycle keeps moving. This is nothing new or unusual in itself. In the modern world, a healthy ecumenism is always based on the ability to anticipate. It must include the anticipation of redistribution needs and intergenerational balance for political, social and economic justice in order to constantly make the future a common good.

However, this reveals a central contradiction for political Europe. Although Europe is now the most socially just continent, it lags significantly behind other countries in terms of its political, social and cultural approach to the future on a solid systemic and scientific basis. The notorious failure over many years to engage in long-term, institutionalized work on the future could have a negative impact on Europe’s social structure. Most experts agree that, in international comparison, the European Union has so far tended to be bureaucratic, security-oriented and not boldly experimental enough. For decades, it has pursued a distinctly normative and regulatory approach to the future. This is positively linked to Europe’s historical and social ties, which are in themselves one of the continent’s greatest assets. In recent years, however, a one-sidedness has developed in the context of regressive political shifts which – contrary to the continent’s fundamental role in the emergence of modern science and technology – has contributed to Europe’s lag in creative technology and innovation due to overly conservative and, in most cases, undiversified interpretations of the future.

According to EU analyses, this failure has led to a backlog in eight of the ten most important future technology fields (ESPAS 2023), particularly in recent years. This was recently highlighted in the EU Forward Look 2023 (ESPAS 2023), 2024 (Council of the European Union 2024) and 2025 (Council of the European Union 2025), but also the two most important reports on the future of the EU: the one on the common European market by Enrico Letta (Letta 2024) in April and the one on the future of Europe’s global competitiveness by Mario Draghi (Draghi 2024) in September 2024. All three even explicitly expressed their “fear for Europe” (Draghi 2024b) due to a lack of systemic future orientation. All three called for a stronger focus on future competence as a response to securing prosperity, because not only economic competitiveness but also cultural appeal (soft power) depend on it.

Europe is lagging behind not only in terms of investment in future know-how, but also in terms of the quality of its development of pioneering models in terms of methodology and content. Above all, however, the institutionalization of futurology, future studies and future policies to build future competence for Europe’s administration, politics and younger generations is still pending – at all levels of education and training. Teaching programs such as “Designing Futures” (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt 2025) at the School of Transformation and Sustainability at the University of Eichstätt/Ingolstadt or the public promotion of future-oriented approaches, such as the Young Researchers’ Award of the European Region Tyrol at the Alpbach Forum 2025 (Alpbach.org 2025b), which was dedicated to the future of competitiveness, are still too often commendable exceptions. They show that the future of the core issue of sustainability (Benedikter 2024b) will also depend on a more holistic future orientation of Europe.

The conclusion, on which most experts in virtually all development sectors now agree, is therefore clear: it is high time for political Europe to invest in the future. It is important to note that futures are increasingly becoming a topic of integration and holism. This is changing their character. Whereas they have often been focused on opportunities in individual sectors in the past, in the coming years they will become a process-oriented effort to understand, which from now on must be carried out continuously in terms of social policy, i.e. it cannot be completed, but must be constantly renewed. The future of civil society, which is important for Europe, also depends on the development of approaches and methodologies in science, business and politics.

In the coming years, this perspective should focus primarily on seven core aspects:

• Firstly, the social negotiation of competing visions of the future.

• Secondly, scientific research into futures.

• Thirdly, a dialogue on the acceptance of futures, so that citizens can help shape ideas and plans and go along with them.

• Fourthly, it is about working on the collective imagination that underpins the future. This is abused in autocracies, but in democracies it is positively referred to as “imagination politics” (Bottici 2014) or “world generation”.

• Fifthly, it is about futures casting (Banz et al. 2024) and futures staging, i.e. the effective staging of desirable and possible futures in order to stimulate both the eye and active participation.

• Sixthly, it is important to make policy with futures in mind: not what happens, but how it happens – responsibly or by means of empty promises. This is about a political culture and ultimately a social contract, which could be an ethics of futures.

• Seventh and finally, future competence is about innovation: embedding and driving innovation efforts holistically into possible, expected or desired futures – and designing maps of these futures that are as broad and intensively networked as possible. In technical jargon, this is now referred to as “forefront mapping”, a new term that European scientists in particular are seeking to promote.

Those who integrate these seven dimensions of working on future competence into a practically based education and training program for politics, science and society will be well prepared for the coming decades. Ultimately, all dimensions converge in a coordinated competence program that integrates the major global issues between the present and the future into awareness-raising (Benedikter 2025). This awareness-raising should also serve transgenerational justice in particular. For it is in the future that today’s experienced people meet tomorrow’s shapers. Both should be included on an equal footing, because the future, by definition, belongs not to those of today but to those of tomorrow.

However, in order to realize this vision, three practical (and pragmatic) tasks must first be accomplished.

Firstly, a public debate must be held on the fundamental future orientation of education and training. The subject should be the changing requirements in the orientation of society. The topic of the future can structure and guide long-overdue, fundamental reforms in the field of education and training.

Secondly, populism should be taken out of the picture with holistic, ideologically active, “self-deconstructive” work on the future. Like that of the new nationalism (Benedikter 2018), the popularity of populism currently thrives on its – undeserved! – dominance over imaginal politics, whereby it singles out individual sectors and ignores others, appropriating possible, expected and desirable perspectives. People’s expectations for the future are becoming more important for their voting behavior and political attitudes. They must therefore not be left to those who operate with half-truths and fears about the future. It is unacceptable for the serious members of society to argue on the basis of the present, while the future, which is at least as important, is left to the unserious.

Thirdly and finally, focusing on futures can enhance the value of European border, intermediary and exchange regions at the intersections between cultures, languages and ethnic groups in a special way. This is because, through dialogue about the future, new approaches to “knowledge diplomacy” can emerge in these regions, driving European integration forward. The reason: it is often easier to talk about futures (in the plural) than about the present (in the singular). Why? Because there are many futures and they seem less dangerous, precisely because they do not yet exist. This enables open, cooperative creativity that does not have to fear constructive comparison and debate about the best ideas.

What is the conclusion?

Political Europe needs a new, systematic and long-term offensive in the area of the future. This will not least enhance the status of European regions, sub-groups, marginalized groups and minorities. Their perspectives bring a broader multi-perspectivity and thus richness to the discourse on the future. As one of the most prosperous transnational communities on the planet, Europe should set out on this path for the future, above all to remain at the forefront of humanity and foresight. This can be achieved by institutionalizing future thinking (Benedikter 2024c) and future competence in such a stable and long-term manner that they can constantly renew themselves.

What does the outlook show?

According to EU veteran Jean-Claude Juncker (speaking at the opening of the European Forum Alpbach in Alpbach in 2025 [European Forum Alpbach 2025, Alpbach.org 2025c]), what characterizes Europe’s newer creative elites today, in addition to many positive and progressive qualities such as global, transnational and multipolar awareness and multidisciplinary education, is impatience, short-sightedness, blind faith in technology and a lack of creativity. As an EU representative, one has no power internationally (cf. Draghi 2025), wants everything immediately, thinks in terms of career periods and now prefers to seek advice from artificial intelligence rather than wise people. But Europe must stop thinking only in terms of legislative periods, driving on sight, being impatient, wanting everything immediately and increasingly relying on the advice of artificial intelligence and chatbots. Instead, Europe needs more than ever today to take a long-term view, to be patient, and to think genuinely about the future, taking into account the really big issues facing humanity, which must be considered in an interdisciplinary networked way from a broad perspective. And Europe needs imagination and human creativity together with AI generativity. Why?

Those who approach the future in a manner that is appropriate, complex and decisive at the same time give the ‘restless heart’ (Augustine) of most of our contemporaries not ‘the’ meaning, but more meaning. This gives rise to human processes that give substance to Europe. Only these processes can create a Europe that has both permanence and a future. In the long term, this will pay high dividends economically, socially and, above all, humanely. Not only for the elites, but increasingly for Europe’s populations, the following now applies: the prospects for continuity, stability and certainty depend on how the continent positions itself with regard to possible, probable or desirable futures: event-driven or prepared, uncoordinated or organized, sectoral or holistic, technology-oriented or balanced between human and technological aspects. The future of the relationship between democracy and populism also depends on this. Political Europe would be well advised to start addressing “futures” methodically and systematically as a common topic of rational discussion among people today in order to be prepared for tomorrow.

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The author

Roland Benedikter, DDDr., is UNESCO Chair holder for Interdisciplinary Anticipation & Global-Local Transformation and Co-Head of the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research in Bolzano, Italy, ordinary member of the Association of UNESCO Chairs of Italy ReCUI and ordinary member the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. 2019-23 he was a member of the BMBF Future Circles for the German Federal Government, 2024-25 a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Dubai Global 50 Future Opportunities Report 2025. He serves as co-editor or scientific board member of New Global Studies (de Gruyter), Harvard International Review (Harvard), Studi Politici (Sapienza Università di Roma I), Attualità Pedagogiche (Università di Salerno) and the Brill book series Global Populisms. Homepages: https://www.eurac.edu/en/people/roland-benedikter and https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-benedikter-8341922a9/. Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=mOee1ZcAAAAJ&hl=en. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7977-7052. Contact: roland.benedikter@eurac.edu.