Emerging Risks 2026: What Risk Leaders Must Prepare for Now

A live session where we’ll discuss the key risks shaping 2026, including: operational resilience, cyber risk, third-party dependencies, fraud, and board-level accountability—grounded in insights from the Global Risks Report 2026.

Emergent Risks

ISO 31050:2023

Risk management

Guidelines for managing an emerging risk to enhance resilience

Emerging risks are characterized by their newness, insufficient data, and a lack of verifiable information and knowledge needed for decision-making related to them. As these risks can develop with the potential for large threats and opportunities, appropriate management of emerging risks should be established as a part of an organization’s risk management. It should include changes in circumstances or conditions across multiple aspects of the organization’s external context, and the implications for its internal context.

CHARACTERISTICS

Unpredictable

although there may be known risks, for example, a terrorist act, a pandemic, or a natural disaster, it is not known exactly when, where, and how they will occur. Their materialization is unexpected and surprising for most people; an example is the recent pandemic generated by COVID-19, for which neither organizations nor governments were adequately prepared.

Uncertainty

uncertainty is one of the main characteristics of these risks because, in addition to not knowing if and when they will occur, it is not known what their real impact will be, i.e., how much damage they may cause to aspects such as the operation, liquidity, reputation and survival of an organization. For this reason, they are not easy to assess.

Complex and changing:

they evolve rapidly and generate impacts in different areas of companies, as well as in people’s lives and governments’ development.

Emerge from global trends

whether political, economic, social, environmental, or technological. It is key to monitor these trends to identify those risks that could arise and have a high impact. In addition to these characteristics, emerging hazards can be man-made and natural and cause large-scale events.

Source: The Global Risk Report 2026

Chapter 1 presents the findings of this year’s Global Risks Perception Survey (GRPS), which captures insights from over 1,300 experts worldwide. It explores risks in the current or immediate term (in 2026), the short-to-medium term (to 2028) and in the long term (to 2036).

Chapter 2 explores the range of implications of these risks and their interconnections, through six in-depth analyses of selected themes.

Emerging Risks 2026

The 2026 Risk Landscape

(The "Why Now")

• The Defining Theme: "Multipolarity without Multilateralism." 2026 is characterized by a breakdown in global cooperation and a shift toward "State Capitalism," where governments actively pick winners and losers.
• The Sentiment Shift: 50% of risk experts now describe the outlook as "turbulent" or "stormy."
• Key Insight: Risks are no longer linear; they are poly-crises (e.g., a cyberattack that triggers a supply chain failure, which then fuels domestic civil unrest).

The "Big Three" Dominant Risks

"The New Frontier" Risks

• Misinformation & Disinformation
  Ranked as a top-3 short-term risk for 2026. Explain how deepfakes now threaten corporate reputation and market stability in real-time.
  
  
• Infrastructure Vulnerability
  Extreme weather and aging physical systems (dams, grids, bridges) are reaching a breaking point, leading to massive "Business Interruption" claims.
  
  
• The Talent/Skills Gap
  The rapid integration of AI is creating a "Gen Z Rebellion" and a critical shortage of workers who can manage human-AI collaboration safely.

Strategic Priorities for Risk Leaders

• Calculate TCOR (Total Cost of Risk)
  Move beyond insurance premiums; include reputational damage, deductibles, and the cost of operational downtime.

• Dynamic Scenario Planning
  Replace static annual reports with "stochastic modeling" (probabilistic simulations) of supply chain shocks.
  
  
• Distributed Risk Ownership
  Move risk management out of the legal department and into every business unit. Risk is now "everyone’s job."

Summary

• In 2026, the greatest risk is doing nothing
  or relying on 20th-century risk frameworks.
• The "North Star":
  Organizations must shift from Efficiency (just-in-time) to Resilience (just-in-case).

EMERGING RISKS

Are potential threats or hazards that are not currently recognized or fully understood, but have the potential to significantly impact an organization's objectives or operations in the future. These risks often arise from new or unexpected sources such as technological advancements, changes in regulations or legislation, shifts in social or environmental trends, and geopolitical events.

Emerging risks may not have a history of occurrence or may be difficult to predict using traditional risk assessment methods.

They require ongoing monitoring and assessment to identify and understand their potential impact, likelihood of occurrence, and the effectiveness of existing risk management strategies.

Risk intelligence cycle and managing emerging risks

A risk intelligence cycle should be applied to managing the emerging risk by:

• continual scanning to collect, analyse and interpret data, information and knowledge on emerging risks that occur within a context that is often characterized by unpredictable volatility, high degree of uncertainty, network complexity and rapid rates of change;
• considering that data on emerging risks gathered under such changing circumstances are limited (in quality and quantity) and their need for urgent interpretation often leads to increasing ambiguity of available information;
• considering data about other relevant known risks;
• associating the criticality of intelligence to effective decision-making due to the limitations of available data and information on emerging risks.

MERGING RISK TO ENHANCE RESILIENCE

Business Continuity
Business continuity refers to the ability of an organization to maintain essential functions and operations during and after a disruptive event. It involves the development and implementation of plans, processes, and procedures to ensure the continued delivery of products and services to customers, the preservation of critical assets, and the management of risks that could disrupt business operations.

Business Resilience
Business resilience goes beyond continuity and focuses on the organization's ability to adapt, recover, and thrive in the face of adversity. It encompasses not only the ability to respond effectively to disruptive events but also the capacity to anticipate, prevent, and mitigate risks, as well as the capability to innovate, learn, and evolve in a dynamic and uncertain business environment. Business resilience involves building a culture of resilience, fostering flexibility, agility, and creativity, and integrating risk management into strategic decision-making processes to enhance the organization's ability to withstand and recover from disruptions and achieve long-term success.

EMERGING RISKS ACTIONS

Is true that emerging risks can be difficult compared to other types of risks for which more information is available, but this does not mean that it is impossible.

Some actions that can be implemented to identify emerging risks are:

1. Constantly monitor and evaluate the internal and external environment of the organization and be updated on global trends, as well as existing and possible conditions of change.
2. Have a deep knowledge of the industry and the market, including the entire supply chain for the production and operation of the company.
3. Consider and review lists of emerging risks presented by industry experts. Validate which risks are relevant to the organization.
4. Think and discuss the different areas, not only risk management, which events with a low likelihood of occurrence but with high impact could affect the operation and continuity of the company.
5. Perform analysis of possible scenarios to identify threats that could materialize and generate impacts on processes or assets.