Technologies were nominated for the Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2025 report through a survey distributed to the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Councils Network, the Frontiers network of chief editors, comprised of editors from top institutions worldwide, and the Top 10 Emerging Technologies Steering Committee members.

The report’s definition of “emerging technologies” encompasses both entirely novel innovations and established technologies being applied in transformative new ways. This inclusive approach recognizes that technological emergence occurs through multiple pathways – whether through groundbreaking new discoveries or through applying existing technologies to solve different problems in ways that could create significant new impact.

Survey respondents, representing a global community of trusted academics and researchers, provided information about the technology nominated, including the technology name, description, key breakthroughs, case studies and how it will impact economies, the environment and society, as well as potential risks that accompany the technology.

In 2025, more than 250 valid technology nominations were submitted by experts across industry and academia. To screen these submissions, the AI Trend Analyzer – developed by Frontiers – mapped nominations to key concepts and matched these concepts 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 research literature.

Each technology was also evaluated using the World Economic Forum Resilience Consortium’s Resilience for Sustainable, Inclusive Growth (2022) framework, focusing on their potential to address systemic challenges and contribute to building adaptive capacity for future generations.

The ranked technologies were then filtered by removing those featured in previous editions of the report. Business funding data was added to support the analysis for each of the top 20 technologies, providing insight into market confidence and commercialization potential.

This refined shortlist of 20 technologies was then assessed by a steering committee of experts, who applied the following selection criteria:

This rigorous, multi-phase selection process ensures a comprehensive and objective assessment of each technology’s readiness and transformative potential.

This year introduces an ecosystem readiness map for each technology. This analysis evaluates how prepared the societal infrastructure is for these technologies to scale and achieve their projected impact.

For each technology, insights were gathered from the Top 10 Emerging Technologies Steering Committee, Frontier’s network of chief editors and futurists from the Dubai Future Foundation. These experts evaluated readiness across five key dimensions, commonly known as STEEP (social, technological, environmental, economic and political) analysis:

Each dimension was rated on a four-point scale from “no readiness” to “high readiness”. The results are displayed in radar charts (see Figure 1) in each technology section, accompanied by key actions required to achieve scale.

These assessments help identify critical gaps that must be addressed before technologies can reach their full potential, providing valuable context for decision-makers across sectors.

Figure 1: Ecosystem readiness map

The strategic outlooks in this report were developed by the Dubai Future Foundation (DFF). For each selected technology, inputs included academic research literature, market analyses and an in-depth foresight analysis of key drivers and implications. The development process involved an initial assessment of each technology’s transformative potential, followed by a systematic analysis of cross-sector applications and implementation barriers. Parameters for evaluation included potential impact across economic, social and environmental dimensions, with particular attention to scaling requirements, governance implications and system-level changes. Each technology was also categorized according to its relationship with two of DFF’s megatrends framework categories to position these innovations within broader evolutionary patterns. This methodical approach ensures consistent evaluation across diverse technological domains.

To complement this year’s report, transformation maps have been developed in partnership with Frontiers’ chief editors. These digital tools visualize how each technology connects to broader systems and global priorities. Hosted on the Forum’s Strategic Intelligence Platform, the maps illustrate intersection points between emerging technologies and related topics, providing curated content from trusted sources. They offer decision-makers a practical resource for exploring potential impacts, understanding cross-domain relationships and tracking ongoing developments.

Explore the maps here.

Figure 2: Example: Green nitrogen fixation transformation map