In 2025 transnational and progressive movements continued to confront a world of deepening authoritarianism, escalating militarism, intensifying climate crisis and the continued erosion of multilateral systems and norms. Despite the declaration of a ceasefire in Palestine in October, the Israeli state continued to murder Palestinian people and enforce genocidal policies; launched violent attacks on Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Qatar and Yemen; committed countless and ongoing human rights abuses; and continued to receive support and collaboration from many imperial powers, who also undertook to repress Palestinian solidarity movements in their own countries. Conflicts continued to rage in Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar and elsewhere, while Europe and NATO called for ever-higher military spending, announcing their intentions to undermine public services and citizens’ well-being in order to further enrich the arms industry. Climate-induced extreme weather events hit communities from Nigeria to Pakistan and from the Caribbean to California, among others, and, with the Belem COP delivering largely disappointing results, a core response from states continues to be increasingly belligerent efforts to guarantee access to “critical minerals” for batteries, “green” energy, and bombs. Far-right and authoritarian leaders took power in countries including the US, where the Trump regime launched a campaign of extra-judicial killings against alleged drug traffickers, kidnapped the Venezuelan president Maduro and empowered US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to carry out mass arrests and deportations in clear violation of due process and human rights. Trump’s return ushered in trade wars and tariffs. His critiques of free-trade globalization and championing of protectionist measures is rooted in chauvinistic nationalism, creating a major challenge for the global trade justice movements who have critiqued free trade and called for increased protectionism, but rooted in social and environmental justice.

And yet, in this undeniably dark moment in history, social movements around the world continue to show that another world is possible. Convergence, solidarity and anti-capitalist systemic transformation are watchwords of transnational movements who are actively and continually seeking ways to bring their diverse struggles into new forms of solidarity, alliance and convergence and fight for “a world in which many worlds are possible”. The Nyeleni Forum in Sri Lanka, for example, brought together 700 delegates from 100 countries, collectively representing well over 300 million people, anchoring a vision of systemic transformation in food sovereignty. In the face of ongoing systematic repression, Palestinian solidarity movements refused to be intimidated into silence, and a growing number of movements for economic and climate justice recognised that “no-one is free until everyone is free”. In the US, organised solidarity movements and formerly unorganised communities rose up together in protest against violence and intimidation by ICE. Workers from Kenya to India to Brazil organised in new ways to resist emerging forms of AI-enabled exploitation and precaritization. In the Netherlands, thousands of activists protested increased militarism and military spending at the anti-NATO summit in the Hague, in June. And throughout 2025, trade justice advocates laid the groundwork for Colombia to reject toxic Investor-State Dispute Settlement mechanisms, and for Brazil to stop the moratorium on digital trade at the WTO.

Through this challenging year TNI has continued to stand in solidarity with transnational progressive movements; strengthen and support their convergence processes; work with movements to develop cutting edge analysis to inform and strengthen their strategies of resistance; and solidify and popularise concrete proposals for transformation. TNI launched its “Green Industrial Policy Lab” to explore how countries in the Global South can design sustainable, just, and effective industrial strategies suited to their own contexts and political projects. TNI also became the first non-academic institution to co-host a prestigious European Research Council Advanced Grant, tackling the role of National Oil Companies in the Global South in the energy transition. In-person Political Economy Crash Courses and other workshops and trainings, and the open-access online Fractures and Post-Growth Cities courses, engaged activists around the world. Our online course offering will be further consolidated as the Transnational Academy in 2026, allowing us to create even more spaces for exchange and collective strategising among movements.

TNI accompanied key social movement processes from the Nyeleni Forum to a grassroots popular tribunal on the rights of small-scale fishers in South Africa; from the ongoing Global Campaign for a Binding Treaty on Transnational Corporations and Human Rights to a growing wave of resistance to investment protection agreements (which have ISDS mechanisms ), which is seeing more and more states express criticism of or consider withdrawing from these toxic agreements because they hinder energy transition; from mobilisations against ever-escalating military spending, to a campaign to bring international drug law into alignment with human rights commitments and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Together with movements and activist-scholars TNI continued to produce critical research on the shifting tides of global capital, the changing face of global geopolitics, and the kinds of policies and practices we need to reorient our societies and economies towards life. TNI’s Flagship State of Power report in 2025 tackled the question of “Geopolitics of Capitalism,” providing cutting-edge analysis of the present moment from TNI Associates, Fellows and experts in their fields. More than 130 reports, articles and policy briefings, written in collaboration with movements and embedded activist-scholars, helped to explore the impacts of the geopolitical moment on working people around the world, and to evidence and advance their alternatives for trade regulation, drug policy, water justice, food sovereignty, energy democracy, public services, just transition, green industrial policy, digital sovereignty, peace and justice for people on the move. We continued to foreground analysis from Palestinian scholars and activists facing repression, and situate Palestine in all our work as a core site of anti-imperialist struggle.

Despite increased awareness and global solidarity with Palestine, common frameworks often view the politics of Palestine too narrowly, focusing only on Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, or reduce solidarity to violations of human rights and international law. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has also highlighted the divergence between the West and the Global South. A clear example of this has been South Africa, Senegal, Cuba, Colombia, Belize, Bolivia, Honduras, Malaysia and Namibia coming together to form the Hague Group to protect and uphold the rulings of the ICJ and ICC. These actions reflect the enduring legacy of anti-colonial solidarity across the Global South—networks that remain active and vital today. TNI has been a part of this work as well, working with partners to support the Hague Group and a multilateralism led by the Global South.

Since 2024 TNI has been publishing a collection of articles and videos to reaffirm the Palestinian struggle as an intersectional and transnational anti-colonial struggle. Drawing on diverse perspectives from scholars and activists from Africa to Asia to Latin America, the series aims to go beyond mainstream Western narratives to explore the interconnectedness of struggles, the role of economic and political interests, and the opportunities and challenges faced by solidarity movements.

At the same time our Myanmar program continued to explore how geopolitical rivalries and grassroots resistance are shaping the ongoing civil war in Myanmar and the struggle against the military dictatorship, and how communities are continuing to struggle for land justice, food sovereignty and new forms of democracy in unbelievably challenging circumstances. Around the world we helped to create space for conversations, alliances and collective learning, and forge inspirational visions of the road ahead for progressive movements.

As we worked to foster and support new generations of activists who will carry forward collective struggles for justice and liberation, we also paused to mourn the passing of some of the giants on whose shoulders we collectively stand. In 2025 TNI grieved the loss of Peter and Cora Weiss, champions of peace and justice and lifelong activists who helped to shape the life and the politics of our institute. Peter and Cora were instrumental in ensuring TNI was truly transnational, seeking scholars and activists from all over the world. Together with Cora’s father, Samuel Rubin they brought structural financial support to TNI through the Rubin foundation In early 2026, we grieved the loss of TNI’s founder and honorary president Susan George. Susan fired the spirit of a generation of activists with books like “How the Other Half Dies,” “The Lugano Report” and “How to Win the Class War”. Her sharp analysis, ready wit, fierce optimism and timeless injunctions to “study the rich” and to “weaken the strong and strengthen the weak” have shaped TNI’s political commitments and our approach to activist-scholarship. While we mourn the loss of her incredible spirit, we also strive to celebrate her legacy and continue the work she began.

TNI’s fellowship was very busy in 2025. Particularly Achin Vanaik, Anuradha Chenoy, Kali Akuno and Anita Gurumurthy helped make sense of the geopolitical and geoeconomic shifts that became evident in the wake of Trump’s election victory in TNI’s Fractures webinar series. Adam Hanieh’s book Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power and the Making of the World Market (Verso, 2024) won the 2025 American Sociological Association Best Book by International Scholar award. Miriyam Aouragh supported TNI in launching a Digital Fortresses project to analyse digital infrastructures underpinning military, policing and border violence. Laura Flanders produced 42 episodes of her show for US public television, covering mutual aid, green energy transitions, and LNG export threats, while launching a newsletter to amplify grassroots movements. Jun Borras co-organized the 3rd Nyeleni World Food Sovereignty Assembly in Sri Lanka and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Land Politics (Oxford University Press, 2025), shaping global debates on land redistribution and agrarian justice. Thea Riofrancos published Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism (W.W. Norton), which became a key reference for critical analysis for understanding the expansion of extractivism in the name of ‘green energy.’ Francesco Martone served as judge and president of the International Tribunal on the Rights of Nature, holding sessions in Ecuador, Canada, and Brazil. Claire Provost published the Feminist Investigative Journalism Handbook (2025), a flagship resource for the Institute for Journalism and Social Change, and co-founded a new MA in Global Data Journalism at SOAS. Boris Kagarlitsky despite imprisonment by the Russian regime for opposing the war in Ukraine, continued to write and inspire global solidarity, with over 20,000 international figures calling for his release through the #FreeBoris) campaign: https://freeboris.info.

TNI also launched an online learning platform, the TNI Academy, for activists and researchers who want to deepen their understanding of key global trends, be inspired with new ideas and real stories of change, and connect to a global community of activists seeking to change the world. We offered the first live course, looking at reimagining urban life through the lens of post-growth thinking, touching on urban mobility, care and democracy, housing, energy, food and digitization. The course had 1,416 participants from over 85 countries worldwide. We have also included a digital capitalism course from 2024 and are working to include other self-paced and live courses in 2026. We co-organised an online teach-in series to look at the deeper forces shaping our world. The TNI Academy will enable us to more easily run future courses.

We were very pleased to receive again our international ISO certification (as well as the Dutch version). It continues to help us to involve more staff in understanding institutional matters and identifying areas for improvement. It also sees us develop a comprehensive risk analysis and start reviewing policies, which has been a useful exercise and helped TNI further professionalize.

Together with many of our allies and comrades, TNI is struggling to sustain itself and chart its course forward as a growing number of governments turn away from structural funding of civil society; as private foundations face growing political controls on their spending from far-right governments; and as the volatility of the global economy gives rise to deepening economic anxiety and a cost-of-living crisis plunging millions into deepening poverty. Yet these challenging times make ever clearer the necessity of the work that TNI does, and we have met the challenges of the last year with solidarity and a shared commitment to political, democratic and generational renewal. While we continue to face a very challenging funding prospect, we are deeply grateful to the supporters – both individuals and foundations – who continue to make our work possible, and to help us find new financial means with which to support the movements and communities with whom we work. While we, like global movements, still see a difficult road in front of us, we draw strength from our shared belief that a better world is possible, necessary, and in the process of being born.