The world finds itself at a profoundly consequential moment in history, one unfolding amid the gradual weakening of old certainties and the emergence of a new and still unsettled world order.

The assumptions that shaped the global imagination for much of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are being questioned with unusual intensity. Institutions that once appeared resilient now seem vulnerable to geopolitical fractures. Economic frameworks that promised seamless integration are giving way to new forms of strategic caution. Alliances that once reflected ideological clarity are increasingly shaped by shifting national interests, transactional calculations, and transient necessity.

Across continents, there is a growing recognition that the world is no longer moving through a usual phase of disruption, but through a deeper and more structural transformation in the nature of power itself.

The age of uncomplicated globalisation has begun to recede. In its place, a far more complex and fragmented landscape has emerged, defined simultaneously by interdependence and distrust. Nations remain deeply connected through trade, technology, finance, and information, yet they are also becoming more protective of sovereignty, resources, supply chains, and strategic capability. The language of openness now coexists with the language of resilience. Economic integration increasingly competes with economic nationalism.

Technological innovation, once viewed primarily as an instrument of progress, has become central to geopolitical competition, national security, and ideological influence. Artificial intelligence, in particular, has introduced questions that extend beyond markets and productivity. It is reshaping the relationship between knowledge and authority, labour and identity, governance and control, while forcing societies to reconsider what human agency itself may mean in the decades ahead.

What makes this historical moment especially significant is not merely the scale of these changes, but the fact that they are unfolding simultaneously. Political realignments, technological acceleration, economic uncertainty, demographic transitions, climate anxieties, and cultural assertions are all converging at once, creating a world that feels increasingly fluid and unpredictable. The old order has not entirely disappeared, yet the contours of the new order remain incomplete and contested. It is within this unsettled and transitional landscape that the theme of the NDTV World Summit 2026 - ‘A World Between Orders’, locates itself.

The theme seeks to capture the defining realities of our times - a world suspended between inherited structures and emerging realities, between familiar assumptions and uncertain futures. It reflects a period in which the frameworks that governed diplomacy, economics, business, and global influence for decades no longer fully explain the present, even as no alternative framework has yet established itself with clarity or permanence. We are living through an interregnum in global history, a period in which the world is negotiating fundamental questions about leadership, legitimacy, growth, security, and coexistence.

History suggests that while such moments are rarely comfortable, they are often transformative. Periods of transition have always altered the intellectual and moral architecture of societies. They produce anxiety and instability, but they also create the conditions for reinvention. New powers emerge. New institutions are imagined. New ideas gain force. The future direction of the world is often shaped less during moments of certainty than during moments of profound ambiguity, when competing visions struggle to define what comes next.

For India, this moment carries exceptional significance. As one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies, a nation of immense demographic energy and technological ambition, and an increasingly influential geopolitical voice, India stands at the intersection of many of the forces that will shape the century ahead. In a world searching for economic dynamism, democratic resilience, and strategic balance, India’s role is becoming steadily more central to the global conversation.

The NDTV World Summit 2026 brings together global leaders, policymakers, economists, thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and cultural voices to reflect on the defining questions of this transitional age. The summit seeks not only to examine the forces reshaping the world, but also to understand the deeper implications of living through a historical moment in which certainty itself has become fragile. It is an invitation to engage with the complexities of a world that is being reordered politically, economically, technologically, and intellectually. 

The NDTV World Summit is a conversation to explore the uncertain space between one lived reality and another in the future, in a ‘World Between Orders’.