World Economic Forum

In January 2006, the WEF published an article in its Global Agenda magazine titled "Boycott Israel", which was distributed to all 2,340 participants of the annual meeting. Following the publication, Klaus Schwab described the publication as "an unacceptable failure in the editorial process".

In late 2015, the invitation was extended to include a North Korean delegation for the 2016 WEF, "in view of positive signs coming out of the country", the WEF organizers noted. North Korea has not been attending the WEF since 1998. The invitation was accepted. However, WEF revoked the invitation on 13 January 2016, after the 6 January 2016 North Korean nuclear test, and the country's attendance was made subject to "existing and possible forthcoming sanctions". Despite protests by North Korea calling the decision by the WEF managing board a "sudden and irresponsible" move, the WEF committee maintained the exclusion because "under these circumstances there would be no opportunity for international dialogue".

In 2017, the WEF in Davos attracted considerable attention when, for the first time, a head of state from the People's Republic of China was present at the alpine resort. With the backdrop of Brexit, an incoming protectionist US administration and significant pressures on free-trade zones and trade agreements, Paramount leader Xi Jinping defended the global economic scheme, and portrayed China as a responsible nation and a leader for environmental causes. He sharply rebuked the current populist movements that would introduce tariffs and hinder global commerce, warning that such protectionism could foster isolation and reduced economic opportunity.

In 2018, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi gave the keynote speech, becoming the first head of government from India to deliver the inaugural keynote for the annual plenary at Davos. Modi highlighted global warming (climate change), terrorism and protectionism as the three major global challenges, and expressed confidence that they can be tackled with collective effort.

In 2019, Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro gave the keynote address at the plenary session of the conference. On his first international trip to Davos, he emphasized liberal economic policies despite his populist agenda, and attempted to reassure the world that Brazil is a protector of the rainforest while utilizing its resources for food production and export. He stated that "his government will seek to better integrate Brazil into the world by mainstreaming international best practices, such as those adopted and promoted by the OECD". Environmental concerns like extreme weather events, and the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation were among the top-ranking global risks expressed by WEF attendees. On 13 June 2019, the WEF and the United Nations signed a "Strategic Partnership Framework" in order to "jointly accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development".

The 2021 World Economic Forum was due to be held from 17 to 20 August in Singapore. However, on 17 May, the forum was cancelled; with a new meeting to take place in the first half of 2022 instead with a final location and date to be determined later in 2021.

In late December 2021, the World Economic Forum said in a release that pandemic conditions had made it extremely difficult to stage a global in-person meeting the following month; transmissibility of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant and its impact on travel and mobility had made deferral necessary, with the meeting in Davos eventually rescheduled for 22 to 26 May 2022.

Topics in the 2022 annual meeting included the Russian invasion of Ukraine, climate change, energy insecurity and inflation. Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a special address at the meeting, thanking the global community for its efforts but also calling for more support. The 2022 forum was marked by the absence of a Russian delegation for the first time since 1991, which The Wall Street Journal described as signalling the "unraveling of globalization". The former Russia House was used to present Russia's war crimes.

The 2023 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum took place in Davos, Switzerland, from 16 to 20 January under the theme "Cooperation in a fragmented world".

On 21 April 2025 Klaus Schwab, Chairman of the Board of the World Economic Forum, informed the Board: "Following my recent announcement and as I enter my 88th year, I have decided to step down from my position as Chair and as a member of the Board of Trustees, with immediate effect."

In August 2025, the Forum faced renewed scrutiny after whistleblowers alleged financial irregularities and a toxic work environment. Interim chair Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, former CEO of Nestlé, resigned citing his personal observations of such conditions. Although an internal investigation by the Zurich-based law firm Homburger and US firm Covington & Burling found no evidence of "material wrongdoing" by Schwab or his wife Hilde, the Board pledged to strengthen governance structures. At the same time, the Forum appointed Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, and André Hoffmann, vice-chair of Roche Holding, as interim co-chairs of its board.

In February 2026, Børge Brende, head of the World Economic Forum, resigned over his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

2025 meeting

The World Economic Forum 2025 took place in Davos, Switzerland, from 20 to 24 January, under the theme Collaboration for the Intelligent Age. The event brought together approximately 3,000 global leaders from over 125 countries, including 350 heads of state and government, business executives, policymakers, and representatives from international organizations. Discussions focused on geopolitical stability, economic resilience, climate change, artificial intelligence governance, and inclusive economic growth. Sessions covered topics such as the future of global trade, energy transition, and the impact of artificial intelligence and automation on the labor market. Several initiatives were introduced, including policy frameworks for AI regulation, climate financing mechanisms, and economic strategies for sustainable development.

Among the initiatives discussed was the Global India Dialogues, launched by the Motwani Jadeja Foundation, which focused on India’s role in global geopolitics, technology, and innovation. Discussions on gender equity and economic inclusion were also highlighted through initiatives such as the Global Good Alliance for Gender Equity and Equality, which explored the economic impact of investments in women's health. The event featured key figures such as Ursula von der Leyen, Antony Blinken, Christian Lindner, and Sam Altman, alongside representatives from the United Nations, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank. The forum underscored the importance of international cooperation in addressing global economic and technological challenges.

The Transnational Institute describes the World Economic Forum's main purpose as being "to function as a socializing institution for the emerging global elite, globalization's "Mafiocracy" of bankers, industrialists, oligarchs, technocrats and politicians. They promote common ideas, and serve common interests: their own".

In 2019, the Manager Magazin journalist Henrik Müller argued that the "Davos Man" had already decayed into different groups and camps. He saw three central drivers for this development:

Ideologically: the liberal western model was no longer considered a universal role model that other countries strive for (with China's digital totalitarianism or the traditional absolutism in the Persian Gulf as counter-proposals, all of which are represented by government members in Davos).

Socially: societies increasingly disintegrated into different groups, each of which evoked its own identity (e.g. embodied through the Brexit vote or congressional blockades in the USA).

Economically: the measured economic reality largely contradicted the established ideas of how the economy should actually work (despite economic upswings, wages and prices e.g. barely rose).

In 2022 the term was again used in a book by The New York Times journalist Peter S. Goodman. Titled Davos Man: How the Billionaires Devoured the World, it was described as a passionate book against global financial inequality.

Public cost of security

Critics argue that the WEF, despite having reserves of several hundred million Swiss francs and paying its executives salaries of around 1 million Swiss francs per year, would not pay any federal tax and moreover allocate a part of its costs to the public. Following massive criticism from politicians and Swiss civil society, the Swiss federal government decided in February 2021 to reduce its annual contributions to the WEF.

As of 2018, the police and military expenditures carried by the federal government stood at 39 million Swiss francs. The Aargauer Zeitung argued in January 2020 that the additional cost borne by the Kanton Graubünden stands at CHF 9 million per year.

The Swiss Green Party summarised their criticism within the Swiss National Council that the holding of the World Economic Forum has cost Swiss taxpayers hundreds of millions of Swiss francs over the past decades. In their view, it was however questionable to what extent the Swiss population or global community benefit from these expenditures.

Gender debate

Women have been broadly underrepresented at the WEF, according to some critics. The female participation rate at the WEF increased from 9% to 15% between 2001 and 2005. In 2016, 18% of the WEF attendees were female; this number increased to 21% in 2017, and 24% in 2020.

Several women have since shared their personal impressions of the Davos meetings in media articles, highlighting that issues were more profound than "a quota at Davos for female leaders or a session on diversity and inclusion". The World Economic Forum has in this context filed legal complaints against at least three investigative articles by reporters Katie Gibbons and Billy Kenber that were published by the British newspaper The Times in March 2020, with the articles still online as of January 2024.

Workplace discrimination

According to The Wall Street Journal, the WEF has had numerous accusations of workplace discrimination against women and Black people.

Undemocratic decision making

According to the European Parliament's think tank, critics see the WEF as an instrument for political and business leaders to "take decisions without having to account to their electorate or shareholders".

Since 2009, the WEF has been working on a project called the Global Redesign Initiative (GRI), which proposes a transition away from intergovernmental decision-making towards a system of multi-stakeholder governance. According to the Transnational Institute (TNI), the Forum is hence planning to replace a recognised democratic model with a model where a self-selected group of "stakeholders" make decisions on behalf of the people.

Some critics have seen the WEF's attention to goals like environmental protection and social entrepreneurship as mere window dressing to disguise its true plutocratic nature and goals. In a Guardian opinion piece, Cas Mudde said that such plutocrats should not be the group to have control over the political agendas and decide which issues to focus on and how to support them. A writer in the German magazine Cicero saw the situation as academic, cultural, media and economic elites grasping for social power while disregarding political decision processes. A materially well-endowed milieu would in this context try to "cement its dominance of opinion and sedate ordinary people with maternalistic-paternalistic social benefits, so that they are not disturbed by the common people when they steer". The French Les Echos furthermore concludes that Davos "represents the exact values people rejected at the ballot box".

Lack of financial transparency

In 2017, the former Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung journalist Jürgen Dunsch criticized that financial reports of the WEF were not very transparent since neither income nor expenditures were broken down. In addition, he outlined that the foundation capital was not quantified while the apparently not insignificant profits would be reinvested.

Recent annual reports published by the WEF include a more detailed breakdown of its financials and indicate revenues of CHF 349 million for the year 2019 with reserves of CHF 310 million and a foundation capital of CHF 34 million. There are no further details provided to what asset classes or individual names the WEF allocates its financial assets of CHF 261 million. From July 2019 to June 2020, the World Economic Forum has spent €250,000 on lobbying the European Union.

The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung criticised in this context that the WEF had turned into a "money printing machine", which is run like a family business and forms a comfortable way to make a living for its key personnel. The foundation's founder Klaus Schwab draws a salary of around one million Swiss francs per year.

Unclear selection criteria

In a request to the Swiss National Council, the Swiss Green Party criticised that invitations to the annual meeting and programmes of the World Economic Forum are issued according to unclear criteria. They highlight that "despots" such as the son of the former Libyan dictator Saif al-Islam al-Gaddafi had been invited to the WEF and even awarded membership in the club of "Young Global Leaders". Even after the beginning of the Arab spring in December 2010 and related violent uprisings against despot regimes, the WEF continued to invite Gaddafi to its annual meeting.

Environmental footprint of annual meetings

Critics emphasise that the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum is counterproductive when combating pressing problems of humanity such as the climate crisis. Even in 2020, participants travelled to the WEF annual meeting in Davos on around 1,300 private jets while the total emissions burden from transport and accommodation were enormous in their view.

Corporate capture of global and democratic institutions

The World Economic Forum's "Global Redesign" report suggests to create "public-private" United Nations (UN) in which selected agencies operate and steer global agendas under shared governance systems.

In September 2019, more than 400 civil society organizations and 40 international networks heavily criticised a partnership agreement between WEF and the United Nations and called on the UN secretary-general to end it. They see such an agreement as a "disturbing corporate capture of the UN, which moved the world dangerously towards a privatised global governance". The Dutch Transnational Institute think tank summarises that we are increasingly entering a world where gatherings such as Davos are "a silent global coup d'état" to capture governance.

Also in September 2019, the award-winning HBO satirical comedy-drama Succession — considered one of the greatest television shows of all time — aired the episode "Argestes", which received a Rotten Tomato score of 100%. Commentators characterized the episode as social commentary against the wealth and power of the global elite at the World Economic Forum.

Non-accreditation of critical media outlets

In 2019, the Swiss newspaper WOZ received a refusal of its accreditation request for the annual meeting with the editors and subsequently accused the World Economic Forum of favoring specific media outlets. The newspaper highlighted that the WEF stated in its refusal message that it [the forum] prefers media outlets it works with throughout the year. WOZ deputy head Yves Wegelin called this a strange idea of journalism because in "journalism you don't necessarily have to work with large corporations, but rather critique them".

Institutional initiatives

In addition to economic policy, the WEF's agenda is in recent years increasingly focusing on positively connoted activist topics such as environmental protection and social entrepreneurship, which critics see as a strategy to disguise the organisation's true plutocratic goals.

In a December 2020 article by The Intercept, author Naomi Klein described that the WEF's initiatives like the "Great Reset" were simply a "coronavirus-themed rebranding" of things that the WEF was already doing and that it was an attempt by the rich to make themselves look good. In her opinion, "the Great Reset is merely the latest edition of this gilded tradition, barely distinguishable from earlier Davos Big Ideas.

Similarly, in his review of COVID-19: The Great Reset, ethicist Steven Umbrello makes parallel critiques of the agenda. He says that the WEF "whitewash[es] a seemingly optimistic future post-Great Reset with buzz words like equity and sustainability" while it functionally jeopardizes those goals.

A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research investigated the sociological impact of the WEF. It concluded that the WEF does not solve issues such as, poverty, global warming, and chronic illnesses, or debt. The forum has, according to the study, simply shifted the burden for the solution of these problems from governments and business to "responsible consumers subjects: the green consumer, the health-conscious consumer, and the financially literate consumer".

Appropriation of global crises

In December 2021, the Catholic Cardinal and former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) Gerhard Ludwig Müller criticised in a controversial interview that people like WEF founder Schwab were sitting "on the throne of their wealth" and were not touched by the everyday difficulties and sufferings people face e.g. due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the contrary, such elites would see crises as an opportunity to push through their agendas. He particularly criticised the control such people would exercise on people and their embracement of areas such as transhumanism. The Central Council of Jews in Germany condemned this criticism, which is also linked to Jewish financial investors, as antisemitic.

On the other hand, the WEF has been criticized as "hypocritical" towards Palestinian human rights, when it rejected a petition from its own constituents to condemn Israel's aggression against Palestinians. WEF cited the need to remain "impartial" on the issue. However, Khaled Al Sabawi, writing in MondoWeiss called it hypocritical after it voluntarily condemned Russia's aggression against Ukraine months later.

Tampering data

In July 2025, the founder of World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, was accused of abuse of power after an internal WEF investigation found that when data for the 2017/18 WEF's Annual Competitiveness Report showed the UK had moved up the ranking from seventh to fourth place he intervened by writing to staff that the UK "must not see any improvement" as this would otherwise be "exploited by the Brexit camp". The final report published showed the UK had instead dropped by one place to eighth. In the same report India should have dropped 20 places in the ranking. However Schwab told his staff that "we must protect our relationship with India before Davos 2019", consequently the published report showed India had dropped by only one place to fortieth.

Controversies

Whistleblower allegations and controversy with Klaus Schwab

In May 2025, Klaus Schwab launched a defamation and coercion complaint against anonymous whistleblowers whose allegations prompted his resignation as chair of the WEF board of trustees in 2025. The accusations, including claims of financial impropriety, research manipulation, and mishandling of sexual harassment cases, were described by Schwab as "stupid and constructed". Despite stepping down from the WEF, Schwab maintains his innocence and has stated that his lawyers filed a criminal complaint with the Geneva public prosecutor, marking a turbulent period for the World Economic Forum as an organisation. The controversy also highlighted management issues at the WEF identified in earlier investigations and reignited scrutiny over its workplace culture.

Davos municipality

In June 2021, WEF founder Klaus Schwab sharply criticised what he characterized as the "profiteering", "complacency" and "lack of commitment" by the municipality of Davos in relation to the annual meeting. He mentioned that the preparation of the COVID-related meeting in Singapore in 2021/2022 had created an alternative to its Swiss host and sees the chance that the annual meeting will stay in Davos between 40 and 70 percent.

Usage of "Davos"

As there are many other international conferences nicknamed with "Davos" such as the "Davos of the Desert" event organised by Saudi Arabia's Future Investment Initiative Institute, the World Economic Forum objected to the use of "Davos" in such contexts for any event not organised by them. This particular statement was issued on 22 October 2018, a day before the opening of 2018 Future Investment Initiative (nicknamed "Davos in the desert") organised by the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia.