2020s

The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties"; shortened to "the '20s" also known as "The Twenties") is the current decade that began on January 1, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2029.[1][2]

From top left, clockwise: COVID-19 became a global pandemic in 2020 and dominated the early part of the decade, as the disease and virus that causes the disease were deemed an international public health emergency until 2023; Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the city of Kherson after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, part of the greater Russo-Ukrainian War; An AI image generated artificially by DALL-E 2, following significant advances in generative AI during the decade; A U.S. Air Force plane carries passengers out of Afghanistan during the 2021 fall of Kabul at the end of the War in Afghanistan; Charles III became King of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth realms, after the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022; In addition to many private and public spaceflight advancements, the James Webb Space Telescope launched in 2021.

The 2020s began with the COVID-19 pandemic—the first reports of the virus were published on December 31, 2019, though the first cases are said to have appeared nearly a month earlier[3]—which caused a global economic recession as well as continuing financial inflation concerns and a global supply chain crisis.

Several anti-government demonstrations and revolts occurred in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including a continuation of those in Hong Kong against extradition legislation; protests against certain local, state and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic; others around the world, particularly in the United States against racism and police brutality; one in India against agriculture and farming acts; one in Israel against judicial reforms; another in Indonesia against the omnibus law on jobs; ongoing protests and strikes in France against pension reform; an ongoing political crisis in Peru, Armenia, and Thailand; and many in Belarus, Eswatini, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and Russia against various forms of governmental jurisdiction, corruption and authoritarianism; along with citizen riots in the United States and Brazil in an attempt to overturn election results.

Ongoing military conflicts include the Myanmar civil war, the Ethiopian civil conflict, the Kivu conflict, the Mali War, the Yemeni civil war, the Somali Civil War, the Syrian civil war, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine became the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, and resulting in a refugee crisis, disruptions to global trade, and an exacerbation of economic inflation. Smaller conflicts include the insurgency in the Maghreb, the Iraq insurgency, the Philippine drug war, and the Mexican drug war. The year 2021 saw the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, ending twenty years of war in that country, and leading to the republican loyalist uprising against the new emirate government.

With many extreme weather events magnifying in the early 2020s, several world leaders have called it the "decisive decade" for climate action as ecological crises continue to escalate.[4][5] In February 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes killed at least 57,000 people in Turkey and Syria; this event fell within the top ten deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century.

Technological advances have been made, benefitting many, such as the use of teleconferencing, online learning, streaming services, e-commerce and food delivery services to compensate for lockdowns ordered by governments around the world during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 5G networks have launched around the globe at the start of the decade as well, and became prevalent in smartphones. Significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence have occurred with artificial intelligence art and chatbots becoming more accessible and mainstream. The private space race also greatly accelerated in the 2020s, as did government-funded space projects such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Ingenuity helicopter.

On 15 November 2022, the world population grew to over 8 billion people, and in 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world.[6][7]