For the 2026 report, the expert survey used in previous years was replaced by an AI-based nomination workflow developed by Frontiers. The workflow uses large language models (LLMs) to systematically generate and validate technology nominations at scale, drawing on Frontiers article data and industry news, with cross-model validation to ensure robustness.

The workflow covered eight academic fields of study and 13 industry sectors. For each field or sector, the LLM generated up to 10 structured nominations that included the technology name, description, key breakthrough, market applications and societal impact. The workflow was run using three separate LLMs to cross-check outputs, including OpenAI GPT- 4.1 mini, OpenAI GPT-5 and Google Gemini 2.5.

To ensure consistency and quality, the prompts specified that every nominated technology had to be realistic and applicable, thereby excluding theoretical proposals for future innovations. An additional classification step used the LLM to evaluate whether each nomination represented a genuine technology or a broader trend, and non-technology nominations were flagged accordingly.

All AI-nominated technologies received a trendiness score via the AI trend analyser developed by Frontiers, which mapped nominations to key concepts and matched them to their frequency in academic articles over a rolling 10-year period. From this analysis, an average trendiness score was established, indicating each technology’s growing presence and momentum in its field.

The AI-discovery tool’s nomination list was narrowed from more than 1,200 technologies to roughly 80. This refinement drew on the trendiness data, an evaluation of emerging innovations, internal consultations with topic experts from World Economic Forum thematic centres and the removal of innovations previously featured in Top 10 Emerging Technologies reports.

Over the course of two months, leading global researchers consulted on subsections of the 80-technology list most relevant to their fields, helping identify the technologies that should be moved forward for consideration by the Advisory Council. Researchers confirmed each technology’s novelty and potential impact, and recommended removing technologies that did not warrant further consideration. Through these consultations, the final list of 20 technologies was identified for Advisory Council consideration.

Before presenting the list to the Advisory Council, each of the 20 technologies was assessed against two additional scores that captured impact and business traction.

The impact score was developed using the World Economic Forum Resilience Consortium’s Resilience for Sustainable, Inclusive Growth framework, which focuses on the potential of technologies to address systemic challenges and build adaptive capacity for future generations. The more areas of systemic challenge a technology was expected to address, the higher its score on a scale of 1 to 5.

The business traction score was developed by constructing a search query for each nominated technology and pulling funding totals and company counts from CB Insights across two time windows that captured recent and long-term activity. A log transformation was applied to smooth outliers, and the results were then normalized to a 0–100 scale. A weighted composite score was then calculated across three dimensions: funding accounting for 45%, density of active companies accounting for 30%, and the pace of recent acceleration relative to historical activity accounting for 25%.

The Advisory Council met and voted on technologies for inclusion and wildcard nominations in two 90-minute meetings in February 2026. Deliberation followed a modified Delphi approach, in which council members submitted anonymous assessments through a structured survey before the meetings and refined their views through facilitated discussion across the two sessions. The meetings were led by the report’s co-chairs and informed by research and consultations conducted throughout the process.

To complement the strategic outlooks, transformation maps were developed by the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence Platform and co-curated with leading domain experts connect each technology to broader systems, global priorities and cross-domain implications. Hosted on the Forum’s Strategic Intelligence Platform, these maps provide decision-makers with a live resource for tracking ongoing developments across technology, industry and policy.

Emerging technologies are first explored in terms of their potential benefits and risks, then assessed against the key conditions needed for success, such as technological readiness, regulation, market demand and societal impact. They are explored within the context of relevant megatrends to better understand future opportunities, challenges and uncertainties.

This approach balances visionary thinking with practical grounding, imagining desirable futures while identifying a real-world example of industry impact.

From the strategic outlooks, the Dubai Future Foundation created key calls to action to support each technology’s path to scale. These were machine-led in development and then refined for consistency and assigned to six groups of key decision-maker tags to indicate which actions each group can take, as applicable.

Setting rules
National governments, ministries of energy or health, environmental agencies, financial regulators and central banks

Building and bringing to market
Technology companies, engineering firms, pharmaceutical and biotech manufacturers, hardware producers and software platform developers

Allocating capital and underwriting risk
Institutional investors, development finance institutions, sovereign wealth funds, global health funders and insurers

Running and deploying systems
Grid and utility operators, hospital networks, municipal water authorities, critical digital infrastructure and public sector procurement bodies

Generating knowledge
Universities, national research institutions, clinical trial networks, independent scientific advisory bodies and shared data networks

Establishing shared benchmarks
International standards bodies, industry coalitions, professional accreditation bodies and building rating systems