Curated by: Kabir Taneja | Stelin Paul

The Raisina Edits 2026 arrives at a moment of profound global churn. Power is dispersing even as rivalries intensify. Institutions built for a different century strain under the weight of new expectations. Development competes with defence, climate urgency collides with political hesitation, and technology races ahead of regulation. Across theatres and terrains — from contested borders to contested bandwidth — the grammar of global order is being rewritten.

Anchored in six thematic pillars, this year’s Raisina Edits interrogates the forces reshaping our world.

Contested Frontiers: Power, Polarity, and Periphery examines the hardening edges of geopolitics — the diffusion of power, the mutation of conflict, and the transformation of global commons into arenas of competition. Repairing the Commons: New Groups, New Guardians, New Avenues explores how new coalitions, flexible plurilaterals, and emerging solidarities are stepping in where legacy institutions falter, crafting adaptive architectures for a multipolar age.

With White Whale: The Pursuit of Agenda 2030, we confront the sobering reality of the Sustainable Development Goals as 2030 approaches: can ambition be salvaged from fatigue, and solidarity from fragmentation? The Eleventh Hour: Climate, Conflict, and the Cost of Delay underscores the moral and material urgency of climate action in a world where delay compounds both risk and inequity. Tomorrowland: Towards a Tech-topia turns to the digital frontier, asking whether governance can keep pace with innovation, and whether humanity can still shape the technologies that increasingly shape it. Finally, Trade in the Time of Tariffs: Recovery, Resilience, Reinvention traces the reconfiguration of global commerce, where sovereignty and interdependence coexist uneasily, and resilience is forged through reinvention.

Together, these pillars reflect a world negotiating flux rather than stability, adaptation rather than certainty. The Raisina Edits 2026 brings together diverse voices from across regions and disciplines to decode this transition — not merely to describe a world in disorder, but to illuminate pathways toward a more balanced, accountable, and resilient international order.