2020s


The 2020s is the current decade that began on 1 January 2020 and will end on 31 December 2029.
During the early part of this decade, the world population grew from 7.7 billion to over 8.2 billion people. In 2023, India overtook China to become the most populous country in the world. The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath marked the early 2020s. The first reports of the virus were published on 31 December 2019, though the first cases are said to have appeared nearly a month earlier. The pandemic led to a global economic recession, sustained rise in global inflation, and supply chain crisis. The World Health Organization declared the virus a global state of emergency. With multiple extreme weather events and ecological crises continuing to escalate, several world leaders have called the 2020s the "decisive decade" for climate action. The years 2023 and 2024 both broke yearly global temperature records, with 2024 breaching 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.
Politically, the 2020s marked a period of democratic backsliding in countries such as the United States, India, and Israel, while previously authoritarian nations such as Russia or China witnessed a further slide into totalitarianism. The decade is also marked by the rise of right-wing populist and anti-democratic movements across the world, such as Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy, which formed the first far-right government in Italy since the fall of Benito Mussolini's fascist dictatorship; Javier Milei's La Libertad Avanza in Argentina, which elected the first libertarian head of state in the world; Alternative for Germany, which became the leading opposition party in Germany after the 2025 German federal election; and the Republican Party in the United States shifting towards national conservatism. The 2020s also saw a decline of establishment politics as centrist parties, such as the Democratic Party's defeat in the 2024 United States elections, or Emmanuel Macron's Renaissance losing to the left-wing New Popular Front and the far-right National Rally in the 2024 French legislative election.
Anti-government demonstrations and revolts occurred, such as the Gen Z protests including the "Asian Spring" in Asian countries, predominantly led by the eponymous Generation Z, in response to inequality, declining standards of living, corruption, democratic backsliding and authoritarianism. Social media has been a common tool for activism and coordination. Protests against responses to COVID-19, against racism and police brutality by the Black Lives Matter movement, and against various forms of governmental jurisdiction, corruption, and authoritarianism occurred; along with citizen riots throughout the United States and Brazil attempting to overturn election results, seen by supporters as stolen, taking place. Among democracies in 2024, its elections saw 80% of incumbent parties lose support worldwide, as with the 2024 United States presidential election. In 2025, Trump triggered a global trade war, marking a new era of economic nationalism.
Ongoing military conflicts include those in Myanmar, Ethiopia, Mali, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza. The year 2021 saw the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, ending nearly 20 years of war. The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted in a refugee crisis, global trade disruptions, and economic inflation. In 2023, Hamas carried out the October 7 attacks in Israel, killing over 1,200 Israelis and taking 250 as hostages. This led to the Israeli invasion, bombing, blockade, and starvation of the Gaza Strip, which has killed over 65,000 Palestinians and has been characterized as a genocide by a wide consensus of scholarship. The Gaza conflict spilled over, with Houthi attacks on commercial vessels triggering the Red Sea crisis and Israel invading Lebanon amid its conflict with Hezbollah. In 2024, a quick and renewed rebel offensive during the Syrian civil war led to the toppling of Bashar al-Assad and the fall of his regime. In 2025, Israel launched airstrikes against Iran's military and nuclear facilities, prompting Iran to retaliate and the U.S. to join with its own strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Meanwhile, in the context of the war on cartels, the war on terror and the economic crisis in Venezuela, the U.S. launched Operation Southern Spear in the Caribbean starting in September 2025 with the aim of combating large-scale drug trafficking and narcoterrorism; the U.S. captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January 2026.
Technology has continued to evolve in the 2020s. There have been breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field. Generative AI-based applications, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, allow users to instantly generate sophisticated texts, images, art, and video. Other advances made during this decade include the widespread use of teleconferencing, online learning, e-commerce and food delivery services to compensate for lockdowns ordered by governments around the world during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Streaming services, such as Disney+ and HBO Max, have increased in popularity during the decade, with cable television continuing to fall out of usage. 5G networks launched around the globe at the start of the decade and became prevalent in smartphones. Research into outer space further evolved, with the United States mainly leading space exploration, including with the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, and Artemis program. Virtual reality and augmented reality are being used for remote collaboration, meetings, and training. Contactless payments, including mobile wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, have grown in popularity. The growth of cryptocurrencies and AI led to the cryptocurrency bubble and AI bubble, with both involved in a circular flow of investments believed to be artificially significantly inflating their actual values.

Politics and wars

Major conflicts

The prominent wars of the decade include:

International wars

Civil wars

Revolutions and major protests

Successful revolutions and otherwise major protests of the decade include, but are not limited to:
EventDateCountryEvents
Dutch farmers' protests1 October 2019 – presentNetherlands

Terrorist attacks

Note: To be included, entries must be notable and described by a consensus of reliable sources as "terrorism."
The most prominent terrorist attacks committed against civilian populations during the decade include, but are not limited to:
EventDateCountryDeathsInjuries
Koshebe massacre28 November 2020Nigeria

Political trends

The 2020s marked the end of the Post-Cold War era, particularly in post-communist Eastern Europe, east of the former Iron Curtain. Pasokification marked the decline of Centre-left and centre-right politics throughout the Western world during the decade, led by demographic changes such as increased tertiary education and ethnic diversity as well as the waning influence of religion and the rise of identity politics. At this time, centr-right parties drifted rightward towards libertarianism, right-wing populism, national conservatism, or were supplanted by new far-right parties. Centre-left politics has not declined to the same extent, but centrist politicians have faced significant challenges, most notably Joe Biden. Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ukraine is also struggling, with the next Ukrainian presidential election indefinitely postponed due to the Russo-Ukrainian war.
A deep political divide has arisen in the United States, which has seen acute political polarization, with stark divides along race and ethnicity, educational attainment, and political polarization among states. The 2024 United States presidential election was decided by 1.5%, in one of the closest presidential elections in American history. In 2024, Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris after Harris previously defeated Trump in 2020 as the Vice presidential candidate, in a quasi-rematch.
Western Europe, Canada, and Oceania have largely avoided democratic backsliding and the rise of far-right politics, but even there political instability and polarization has increased. Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom has seen his approval ratings fall precipitously, and Emmanuel Macron of France has faced a French political crisis due to a hung parliament. However, in the 2025 Dutch general election the liberal Democrats 66 party won the most seats.
In East Asia, political instability has also increased, particularly in Japan and South Korea. South Korea had a martial law crisis in 2024, while in Japan the Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority in both houses of the National Diet. The Gen Z protests in Asia began in 2024, with the July Revolution in Bangladesh being described as the world's first Generation Z revolution. Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City in 2025 at the age of 34, becoming the first Muslim, Indian-Ugandan, and millennial mayor of New York City.

Political economic trends

The 2021-2023 inflation surge discredited or weakened nearly all governing parties and leaders during the early 2020s, across ideological lines. In 2025, Trump triggered a global trade war, repudiating neoliberalism and free trade, in favor of mercantilism and protectionism. This was a sea change in Republican Party ideology, raising tariffs to the highest levels since the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act of 1930.
Despite being a capitalist country, the relationship between income and voter support in the United States inverted in 2024, because of educational polarization. Kamala Harris won voters making over $100,000 and $200,000 a year, but lost the election. Similar trends have occurred in Canada and the United Kingdom, as centre-left parties lose the support of those without college degrees, including many with lower incomes. The right-wing populist Reform UK party has attracted lower-income voters who tend to be older, did not graduate from university, and male. As early as 2018, French economist Thomas Piketty had predicted that centre-left parties would come to represent women, the highly educated and high-income, and ethnic minorities, instead of those with low incomes. Kamala Harris's strongest voters were women with graduate degrees and Black women, herself a Black woman with a Juris Doctor.
In particular, high-income and high-education women now vote for liberal parties, while low-income and low-education men now vote for conservative parties, as shown in the graphs. This is a complete reversal from the 20th century. Lower-income men are more conservative than higher-income men, and higher-income women are more liberal than lower-income women. High-income men still vote for conservative parties, and low-income women still vote for liberal parties.
  • The Republican Party's core demographics changed to becoming a party primarily of men without college degrees, including Hispanic men. The Democratic Party's core demographics changed to becoming a party primarily of women with college degrees and Black women. Hispanic men voted to the right of White women in 2024. Women without college degrees and men with college degrees were both fairly evenly split.
Former communist countries, particularly in the former Eastern Bloc, have pivoted towards national conservatism and far-right politics. This includes Russia itself under the authoritarian dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. Putin launched the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine with irredentist motives. The Russo-Ukrainian war represents the deadliest war in Eastern Europe since the Eastern Front of World War II and the Russian Civil War. But the trend was broader, also including Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the Law and Justice party in Poland, and the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which is strongest in the New states of Germany that once comprised East Germany.