Davos becomes extremely heavily secured during the WEF

Attending Davos can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars

Access to Davos’ most exclusive events often comes at a steep price: Annual WEF dues can exceed $50K, premium membership can reach $500K, and attendance adds high costs for travel, lodging, security, and credentials.

Davos, Switzerland, is one of the highest towns in Europe

Perched high in the Swiss Alps, Davos is one of Europe’s highest towns, accessible via a limited number of routes—an isolated setting that heightens both the security and exclusivity of the annual forum.

See who attended Davos 2025

Each year, Davos draws one of the most exclusive guest lists in the world. In 2025, attendees included 60 heads of state, over 900 CEOs and corporate chairs, and top leaders from global civil society, who gathered in the Swiss Alps.

The World Economic Forum works year-round

Beyond its annual Davos meeting, the World Economic Forum operates year-round through 11 centers that convene governments, corporations, and experts to coordinate initiatives around topics such as AI, cybersecurity, energy, climate change, health, finance, trade, geopolitics, and emerging technologies.

Meet Klaus Schwab, the founder and driving force behind Davos

Klaus Schwab founded the World Economic Forum in 1971 and spent five decades promoting stakeholder capitalism and cross-sector cooperation among elites. Under his leadership, Davos became a hub for global power brokers. Schwab stepped down from the role in April 2025 amid accusations of misconduct.

Davos has faced backlash over private jet usage

For the 2022 Davos meeting, which focused on the climate crisis, approximately one in 10 attendees arrived by private jet, producing emissions equivalent to those of roughly 350,000 cars in a week. One recorded jet flight to Davos covered just 13 miles.

Go behind the scenes of Davos with ‘60 Minutes’

In 2010, "60 Minutes" gained rare, near-unprecedented access to the World Economic Forum, with Scott Pelley roaming Davos’ exclusive meetings and elite spaces. See how global power brokers mingle, negotiate, and shape agendas offstage at the event.

Explore an interactive timeline of the most important moments in the WEF’s history

This interactive traces the World Economic Forum’s evolution from a small European meeting in the 1970s into a global power hub, highlighting pivotal moments in Davos, landmark speeches, and turning points that have shaped its outsized influence on world affairs.

Listen to the official weekly podcast of Davos

Produced by the World Economic Forum, "Radio Davos" is the forum's weekly podcast, featuring interviews with global leaders, policymakers, executives, and thinkers on issues ranging from climate change and inequality to technology, work, and geopolitics.

Explore the extensive security in and around the White House

The White House is one of the most secure buildings in the world. Protected by the Secret Service, it features armed patrols, rooftop snipers, barriers, and sensors—layered defenses designed to deter intrusion.

‘A Spirit of Dialogue’ is the theme of Davos 2026

Each year, Davos introduces a new overarching theme to guide the discussions at the event. The 2026 World Economic Forum theme is intended to spark conversation around global challenges including cooperation in a contested world, investing in people, deploying innovation responsibly at scale, building prosperity within planetary boundaries, and more.

Davos has been home to many pivotal moments in international diplomacy

Davos provides a forum for unlikely meetings: FW de Klerk met with Nelson Mandela and Mangosuthu Buthelezi during South Africa’s transition from apartheid, North and South Korea held their first-ever ministerial talks, and East and West German leaders discussed reunification.

Davos hosts the world’s oldest international invitational ice hockey tournament: the Spengler Cup

Founded in 1923, the Spengler Cup is the world’s oldest international ice hockey tournament, held annually in Davos. Created to promote reconciliation after World War I, it remains one of the sport’s most prestigious invitational events.

Google data centers possess six layers of security

Property boundaries, such as anti-climb fencing, overlapping cameras, vehicle crash barriers, and circulating patrols, are coupled with lobby iris scans and ID and badge checks. The security operations center monitors individuals throughout their visit, including the less than 1% of Google users who ever receive permission to visit the data center floor.

The dark web protects free speech from censorship and authoritarian oversight

Encrypted networks allow users with internet access anywhere in the world to view blocked content and avoid surveillance when communicating evidence of abuse to independent journalists. The same networks can support democracies by helping activists coordinate protests on dark web forums.

Because of their size, sovereign wealth funds create anxiety about foreign undermining of financial systems

Across the board, sovereign wealth funds have an immense amount of capital, and, therefore, influence in global financial markets. Critics argue that this influence could enable a foreign country to harm another country's financial market by either investing adversely in competitive markets or by withholding critical capital.

Switzerland's currency is so strong that it could cause deflation

Economic instability in the United States in 2025 strongly benefited Switzerland, where the value of the franc relative to the dollar increased by about 12.7%. In response, the price of imports dramatically decreased, making goods overall much cheaper.

Smart cities like Songdo, South Korea, have created isolating environments

Built as a futuristic, eco-friendly city filled with smart features like pneumatic trash systems and app-controlled homes, the town provides limited opportunities for face-to-face interactions amid sterile backdrops. A focus on high-rise housing amplifies the lonely, disconnected atmosphere.

The Federal Reserve Act's foundation was laid in a secretive meeting at the world's most prestigious club

Republican Sen. Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island organized a highly secretive meeting of the minds at the world’s most prestigious club on Jekyll Island, Georgia, where a who’s who in the financial world hashed out details over the course of a week.

The global defense industry in one chart

The world's most valuable defense companies (for example, Lockheed Martin) make up much of the global defense industry. As of 2025, RTX led the pack with a roughly $183B market cap.

IBM helped turn Rio de Janeiro into a smart city before it hosted the World Cup

In response to the deadly floods and mudslides in 2010, Brazil and IBM developed a multimillion-dollar plan to modernize Rio's emergency management infrastructure. An operations center utilizes advanced weather forecasting, surveillance, and real-time data to surveil and respond to events such as severe storms more accurately.

Hotels in Cannes, the glamorous city on the French Riviera, hire hawks to ward off seagulls during the city's famous film festival.

NATO leads cyber war games in Estonia

Estonia is host to one of the world’s largest annual interactive cybersecurity drills. Russia is always considered the main threat, but this year, the war in Ukraine has only added to the stakes.

Cannes hotels hire hawks to scare off seagulls

Seagulls prey on celebrity tourists visiting for Cannes' festival season, a problem the city's hotels have (mostly) solved with an unlikely solution: more birds. Falconers strategically deploy hawks to scare off the seagulls and, in the process, protect the unsuspecting diners' meals.

See how the Winter X Games course is built

Winter X Games courses are custom-built over weeks, with crews moving thousands of tons of snow to create features like halfpipes and jumps—incorporating athlete input to ensure challenging designs that push progression and safety.

Eleven architects collaborated to create the UN building in NYC

Renowned leaders in the field, accustomed to control over their projects, had to work together to complete the building. This quick article explores the tensions and cooperation of the architects to complete the UN building.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

Double world record holder Hunter Ewen helped conquer his fear of balloons, called globophobia, by training to win Guinness World Record titles for balloon inflation.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Fireworks-related ER visits are on the rise—in 2024, they increased by 52% as compared to the prior year.

Three Ebola species are responsible for most large outbreaks of the disease, yet the only approved Ebola vaccine is known to work against just one of them.

The boiling temperature of water decreases with increasing elevation because the molecules need less energy to overcome the lower atmospheric pressure associated with thinner air.

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.