Top 10 Global Risks, 2020-2025

From rising conflict to geopolitical fragmentation, the global risk landscape looks very different than it did five years ago.

Beyond these factors, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) present both new opportunities and risks, covering everything from national security to the job market, according to an analysis by visualcapitalist.com. According to it, extreme weather events also continue to displace people and reduce crop yields in regions of the world.

The cited source presents the evolution of the top 10 global risks from 2020 to this year, according to the AXA 2025 Global Risks Report.

• Evolution of the top 10 global risks in 2020

If in 2020 the main risk observed globally was the pandemic, in 2021 in first place we find climate change, which has maintained this position in each of the following years to date. As the scale and intensity of extreme weather events accelerate, they pose the risk of damage to infrastructure and property, which is the main concern among experts. At the same time, rising sea levels, droughts and floods have led millions of people to migrate internally around the world.

Climate change was ranked second in the top risks in 2020, and in 2021 and 2023 we find, in this position, cybersecurity. In 2022, 2024 and 2025, second place is occupied by geopolitical instability according to the cited source. This, in the context of the fact that deaths caused by global conflicts reached the highest level in the last 25 years in 2024. In Europe, geopolitical instability ranked as the main overall risk, given the proximity of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Even more gloomy is the fact that more than eight out of ten experts say that there is a significant risk of a global war.

According to the mentioned source, demography entered the list of risks in 2025, appearing for the first time in history in the profile ranking (place 10). Going further, experts from Italy, Japan and Germany ranked it as their main risk, as an aging population puts increasing pressure on public finances.

It is worth noting that in the third position in the top risks we find cybersecurity in the years 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025, and in 2021 this place was occupied by the pandemic. In 2023, geopolitical instability appears in third place in the ranking.

Fourth place was held, in 2020 and 2021, by geopolitical instability, in 2022 - by energy risks (due to the war in Ukraine), and from 2023 to 2025, by AI and Big Data. The fifth position looks like this: social tensions in 2020, 2021, 2024, 2025, pandemic in 2022 and energy risks in 2023.