From May 31 to June 1, 2026, St. Petersburg hosted the Valdai Discussion Club’s third youth conference. This year, young researchers from Brazil, India, Italy, China, Colombia, the Republic of Korea, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Russia took part. All had been actively engaged in the programme over the past year, publishing their own commentaries on the club’s website and contributing to the final report and the conference programme.
During their collaboration in 2025–2026, 19 meetings, seminars, and discussions were held, allowing participants to critically engage with each other’s work. Seventy-five commentaries and three new reports were published on the club’s website.
The title of this year’s conference, like that of the final report—“Beyond the Pattern: The World of Real Multipolarity”—reflects two key features of the programme. First, all participants agreed that a multipolar world order is already a reality, one that new generations of independent researchers must understand. This idea served as the starting point for all discussions during the conference’s main programme.
Second, the project’s research director and participants sought to think methodologically “beyond the pattern”—addressing the most pressing issues of the modern world and assessing their potential beyond established templates and standard formulas. In a sense, this is the added value of the Valdai—New Generation project: creating meanings that are often difficult to achieve when working with more seasoned experts, yet fully within reach for highly educated and already qualified participants. It is fair to say that both goals were successfully met throughout the year of joint work and the final conference.
As Andrey Bystritskiy, Chairman of the Board of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club, noted, the specialists gathered from around the world are truly the best—rigorously selected representatives of their professions, actively researching and teaching at leading universities in their home countries. This made possible a consistent, thoughtful discussion of the main topics identified by the participants themselves: Major Regions in the Context of the Globalisation Crisis; Economic Geopolitics: Between Sanctions and Cooperation; Multipolarity and the Global Military-Political Landscape; The Global South and Development Challenges; and, finally, Ideologies, Values, and Identity.
It is no coincidence that the first session focused on the role of regions and whether—and how—regional cooperation can offset the difficulties arising from the erosion of familiar globalisation institutions and practices. The panellists did not try to reach a consensus. Instead, they aimed to uncover new dimensions of even well-known issues—cooperation and competition in the Arctic, Central Asia, and Greater Eurasia as a whole. This, it seems, was entirely successful, and we can confidently say that the scope of regional studies in the modern world has been significantly expanded.
The second session, “Economic Geopolitics: Between Sanctions and Cooperation,” sought to highlight what participants saw as the most important feature of the modern world: the geopolitical nature of international economic relations and the influence of politics on economic globalisation. At the same time, panellists and discussants moved away from the now familiar catastrophic perception of reality. Their comments combined objective assessments of how politics negatively affects the economy with concrete proposals on where and how to find opportunities for international cooperation.
The session “Multipolarity and the Global Military-Political Landscape” brought together participants from India, China, the Republic of Korea, and Russia. The discussion allowed for a careful examination of how great, major, and middle powers respond to contemporary military political challenges, and what strategies they are developing to achieve their goals and ensure survival. While participants generally agreed on the growing role of military force in interstate relations, they also vigorously argued that force has limits—and that relying on it to resolve all fundamental issues would be frivolous.
The session “The Global South and Development Challenges” focused on how countries in the Global South are freeing themselves from neo-colonial dependence while simultaneously tackling development challenges. It also addressed the specifics of contemporary development assistance policies at the global level, including within UN special programmes. Participants acknowledged that while Europe and the US may retain leadership in setting the rules of the game, more and more Global South countries are turning to the ideas and solutions offered by China, Russia, and such major developing countries as India.
Perhaps the most challenging—and at the same time extremely important—session was “Ideologies, Values, and Identity.” The discussion revealed both a high demand for the topic of values and civilisations and the numerous methodological challenges that arise when the expert community addresses them. The session’s success lies in the fact that, true to the spirit of the entire Valdai—New Generation project, it was able not so much to answer important questions as to clearly define the range of tasks that intellectual efforts can now take on.
Participants agreed with the panellists that the topic of civilisations, values, and ideology will remain relevant, and that we will inevitably have to discuss it. Future cohorts of the New Generation programme, it is believed, will be able to build on the work of their predecessors presented at the St. Petersburg conference. The final report, presented on the morning of June 1, shares its title with the conference itself—“Beyond the Pattern: The World of Real Multipolarity.” It truly brings together the very best and most important ideas of every single participant in the New Generation project, class of 2025–2026.
Overall, as Fyodor Lukyanov, the Valdai Club’s Research Director, emphasised, this youth conference was held for the first time as a full-fledged academic conference in the spirit of the club’s main events. Participants were able to offer not so much different views as different perspectives—the same pressing problems of the modern world and their solutions look different from different regions. The final discussion served as both a summary of the work and a kind of “mandate”: a proposal for the next cohort’s agenda. Participants agreed that, in today’s environment, it is important to study not only the obvious problems and developments, but also those overlooked by changing economic conditions: climate change in its real (rather than commercial) dimensions, problems of international communication and diplomacy, and the role and importance of institutions and organisations in a turbulent world.
We will see how relevant these topics prove to be for the young leaders of the global expert community as the next generation of the Valdai—New Generation project gets to work. After all, the key is not just the specific research topics, but—as Timofei Bordachev, the project’s academic director, noted—the creation of an international community of researchers whose guiding principles are high academic standards, a willingness to embrace diverse perspectives, and an openness to innovation.
