2026, The Hope Revolution

In 2025 we claim to be progressive and aware yet we’ve been maintaining a 2000s mindset of change, growth and business model. We find ourselves in a time where there is less revelation and learning while maintaining the status quo.

Change is now all around us – societally, technologically and culturally – and in reaction to that we have to dial up our ability to transcend the limited narratives of politicians and tech lords to imagine a better world. That is the value of hope-driven futures work. It’s a rocket ship that helps us escape the gravity of mediocrity and potential (soft and/or hard) collapse.

Last year I called 2025 ‘The Year of Hope’. A year framed as part of a turbulent “Fourth Turning” crisis in geopolitics and society. It outlined three critical arenas where leaders must act hopefully and decisively: reclaiming human agency amid “technological totality” and noisy narratives around AI and digital disruption; navigating cyclical geopolitical upheavals and rising right-wing politics while pushing for more equitable futures; and building deep resilience across the water–energy–food nexus as climate stress, resource demands, and ESG expectations intensify. Across these domains, I called for organizations to empower creativity and futures thinking, redesign systems for sustainability, and move beyond short-term profit to long-term responsibility.

I stated hope as a renewable form of strategic energy and invited you to see yourself as ‘Hope Engineers’ working to build a better, more resilient world.

This article and the work I have undertaken from 2023 through 2025 has spurred me to write ‘The Hope Engineer’s Playbook: How Leaders Build Vision, Pathways and Energy for Better Futures’. At the core of this is futures work – scanning for signals, identifying emerging trends, looking at the dynamics of change in scenarios and going deeper into the feelings of how our futures might be with storytelling – and with hope is an energy for change. This is the work of the Hope Engineer – something that has not been widely recognized, or applied as hope has often been marginalized as a folly and emotional activity with the byline of “Hope is not a strategy” – time for that to go.

The truth is that a hope-driven leader sets audacious goals and drives transformation through agency-driven pathways in programs and projects. In fact, research has shown us that high-hope leadership is a huge differentiator when delivering bold projects that aim to change how we operate and create better futures for all.

In ‘The Hope Engineer’s Playbook’ we shed light on pivotal research from American psychologist Charles R. Snyder on what hope is and how it can be useful. In his inspirational and foundational paper ‘Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind’ (you can read that here) Snyder found that goals, pathways thinking, and agency thinking interconnect to produce positive emotions and ultimately lead to better – and more hope-driven – outcomes. He saw that ‘high-hope individuals’ generate multiple pathways, are flexible, and bounce back from adversity whereas ‘low-hope individuals’ often fixate on barriers, generate fewer alternatives, and show diminished motivation. 

His research also demonstrates that high-hope individuals tend to generate more strategies, show greater flexibility in planning, and are more resilient in adversity. They also maintain motivation (an analog for agency) by believing in their capacity to find or create pathways—even when initial plans fail. Conversely, low-hope individuals often struggle with fixed thinking, emotional disengagement, and diminished perseverance.

Hope was found to be relevant when undertaking organizational and industrial change where people frequently use “hope” language when discussing their goals, elevating excitement to achieve them.   This excitement translates into transformational energy that is created from our ability to state audacious goals, to explore multiple pathways towards those goals (pathways thinking) and to motivate and empower individuals and teams to deliver along those pathways (agency thinking) – this is a renewable energy for change.

Moreover, we can explore new ideas and tap into the deeply human capabilities of thinking about our futures with hope as an energy but that is not enough to ensure that we undertake work in an informed and efficient way. This is why we must lean into wisdom to guide us by tapping into our collective knowledge of what worked, what didn’t, the mistakes we made and the revelations we’ve had in our journey of transformation. 

We can see how the three work together in the Futures, Hope and Wisdom Cycle with a common goal of playing a part in the story of our world, the transformation we are undertaking and the hopeful futures we strive towards:

With the Futures, Hope and Wisdom Cycle we find 3 parts to the operating system working together to create a mindset for progressive strategic leadership that drives real and vital vision, creativity and impact, and grounds us in our story of transformation.

• Futures provide us with an ability to explore signals and trends, anticipate the dynamics of change through scenarios & design futures that may come to pass. This prepares us for what might be, and we can reflect that against current thinking and strategic plans.

• Hope gives us focus on the audacious goals we set and allows us to mobilize, energize & build agency to deliver on the pathways towards those goals.

• Wisdom is the culmination of life’s successes, challenges, failures, relationships and connections. It’s the quality of being wise and having lived a productive and interesting life both at work and in life itself. Wisdom acts as our guide – as a personal and group reflection – for undertaking the work as part of the Hope Engineer’s Playbook. It is the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment and helps us discern what futures have relevancy and impact while allowing us to integrate these provocations into strategic thinking & steward actions to drive change. By this virtue we are in a ‘wisdom economy’.

This mindset provides a reminder and reference point on the relationship between the three and provides a reminder that core to the work we do as Hope Engineers is about creating a new story of humanity and its way forward. This provides us with a feeling for how our world today, tomorrow and in the hopeful futures are ahead of us – and how we react to that.

So, why is 2026 being called The Hope Revolution? The term revolution itself means “a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system” and we know that is really very hard and impossible to make happen without a catastrophic act or war, pandemic or act of widely adopted rebellion. In a way my dislike of the term ‘revolution’ is that physical presence of what it means however we must reconsider it as a deeply personal act undertaken by (potentially) billions of people globally as Hope Engineers.

So, here we are, on the cusp of 2026 with no predictions or replaying of the potent tropes of disruption peddled by so many. the ‘age of AI’ and the like to stand together as Hope Engineers with a renewed mindset fueled by the vision of our futures with hope as an energy of change guided by our collective wisdom.

About Nikolas Badminton

Nikolas Badminton is the Chief Futurist & Hope Engineer at futurist.com. He’s a world-renowned futurist speaker, consultant, author, media producer, and executive advisor that has spoken to, and worked with, over 500 of the world’s most impactful organizations and governments.

Nikolas Badminton will publish ‘The Hope Engineer’s Playbook: How Leaders Build Vision, Pathways and Energy for Better Futures’ on Page Two in September 2026.

Nikolas Badminton’s previous book ‘Facing Our Futures: How Foresight, Futures Design and Strategy Creates Prosperity and Growth’ was selected for J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List as the “Next Gen Pick” to inform the next generation of thinkers that lead us into our futures.

Please contact futurist speaker and consultant Nikolas Badminton to discuss your engagement.