Trento Festival of Economics 2026: five days of debate on new powers and the future of young people

New for the Trento Festival of Economics: from 2026, the event will be five days long, bringing together top-level representatives of the economic, academic, political and business community at national and international level. A natural evolution linked to the great success of the last editions with 40,000 participants and the rich programme of the programme. Appointment therefore in Trento from Wednesday 20 May to Sunday 24 May 2026.

For the 21st edition of the Festival, organised for the fifth consecutive year by the 24 ORE Group and Trentino Marketing on behalf of the Autonomous Province of Trento and with the collaboration of the Municipality and the University of Trento, the Advisory Board chaired by the editor-in-chief of Sole 24 Ore Fabio Tamburini has chosen the title "From the market to new powers. The hopes of young people".

A title that compares, on the one hand, the less than comforting picture of international scenarios and geopolitics that see the laws of the market waning as a point of reference and the rise of new powers such as Big Tech and autarchies, and, on the other, the hopes of young people as the resource on which to focus for a better future. In this context, it is indeed important for the West to regain the ground it has lost and will lose, and it can only do so if the forces of youth are brought to the fore.

Fabio Tamburini, Chairman of the Advisory Board and Scientific Committee of the Trento Festival of Economics and Editor-in-Chief of Il Sole 24 Ore, explains: 'There was a time when the market laid down the law. Economists explained that it represented the best synthesis not only between supply and demand, but for the entire architecture of the world. Politicians, or at least a good part of them, theorised its effectiveness. And journalists, or at least most of them, were amplifying its effects. Once again, it was different. The market, together with globalisation, has resoundingly disappeared, leaving room for new powers. In some cases truly new, in others the result of great comebacks. Among the novelties is certainly the impetuous growth of big tech, the American multinationals that have built empires in advanced technologies and are now facing the test of artificial intelligence. This is confirmed by comparing the ranking of the largest capitalisation companies listed on Wall Street. Companies such as Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon have grown at extraordinary speeds, achieving an unprecedented concentration of wealth and power. Certainly today, big tech represents a formidable command centre. Together they share the keys that open the door to developments in artificial intelligence, decisive for the future of businesses and the lives of us all. More influential than many states. A front, the latter, on the move, symbolised by the image of the pendulum swing that is now clearly moving from West to East. The West,' Tamburini continues, 'has to reckon with the impetuosity of President Donald Trump, starting with the increasingly frequent attacks on Europe, which in turn has to reckon with at least three structural weaknesses: the setback in economic development, the negative trend in demographic indices, and the lack of adequate leadership. On the opposite front, autarchies such as Vladimir Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's presidency in China bear witness to how democracy has many virtues but also the defect of making every decision complex in the mechanisms of choice and slow in the passage from saying to doing. The numbers speak for themselves. Almost 60 per cent of humanity lives in Asia. The largest continent on the planet is home to four of the five most populous countries (India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan) and half of those with over 100 million inhabitants. And Africa, set to cross the 2.5 billion mark by 2050, with a median age under 20 years. All this against the backdrop of an increasingly polarised international competition between the United States and China, with old Europe failing to find its way. Perhaps the most disturbing feature is that it is heading for a continuous demographic decline, only partly countered by immigration. The over-50s in Italy, according to Eurostat data, will be the first in Europe to overtake the under-50s, which will happen within the next five years. This is why we need to move from awareness of the demographic winter to active policies to counter the downward spiral'.

Tamburini concludes by explaining the second part of the title: 'The best way is to give young people back the hope for the future that many of them have lost. The primary objective is to make them return to Italia, counteracting the haemorrhage that in 2022-2023 alone has led 700,000 of them, as documented in a Cnel study, to leave the country, almost three times those who have returned. The need, indeed the necessity, is to create the conditions for Italia and the whole of Europe to become a hospitable land for new generations, not countries for the elderly. We owe it to our children, our grandchildren'.