2020s

From top, then left to right:

• COVID-19, a disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, became a global pandemic in 2020 and shaped the early decade.
• The January 6 United States Capitol attack over claims of electoral fraud during the 2020 presidential election; the decade witnessed widespread democratic backsliding as many countries shifted from liberal democracy to authoritarianism.
• The July Uprising in Bangladesh was the world's first Gen Z revolution, as young protesters overthrow their governments in opposition to democratic backsliding, political corruption, and authoritarianism.
• In 2026, the crewed moon flyby mission Artemis II broke the record for the furthest humans have been from Earth.
• Following the October 7 attacks in 2023 by the militant group Hamas, Israel has invaded the Gaza Strip; during the invasion, the Israeli military has committed many war crimes and a genocide which has sparked protests worldwide; the war has spilled over throughout the Middle East.
• Russia launched a full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, starting a new phase of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Europe’s largest and deadliest armed conflict since World War II, with an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 people killed and close to 2 million military casualties, including those killed, wounded or disabled.
• The 2020s have seen rapid growth in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), with the widescale introduction of generative AI tools like chatbots, notably ChatGPT.

The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties" or "two thousand (and) twenties") is the current decade of the Gregorian and Julian calendars that began on 1 January 2020 and will end on 31 December 2029.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath marked the early 2020s, which triggered a global economic recession, sustained rise in global inflation, supply chain crisis, and autocratization. Governments worldwide issued stay-at-home orders during the early pandemic, leading to a widespread use of teleconferencing, online learning, e-commerce, and food delivery services.

In terms of politics, the 2020s has seen a rise in populist and anti-establishment movements across the world on both the left and right sides of the political spectrum, along with anti-government demonstrations and revolts, including the Gen Z protests. The decade saw an escalation of military conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine since 2022, the Gaza war and genocide since 2023, the 2025 Twelve-Day War, and the 2026 Iran war. By the middle of the decade, multiple journalists, economists, and political scientists had increasingly begun to refer to China as a superpower due to its enormous influence in the fields of geopolitics, technology, manufacturing, economics and culture.

Technology has continued to evolve in the 2020s. Throughout the decade, generative artificial intelligence-based applications, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, became widespread, allowing users to instantly generate sophisticated texts, images, and media. The growth of cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence has led to the cryptocurrency bubble and AI spring. The United States has led space exploration, including with the James Webb Space Telescope and Ingenuity Mars helicopter in 2021, and the Artemis II crewed lunar flyby in 2026.

During the early part of this decade, the world population grew from 7.7 billion people to ~8 billion people. In 2023, India overtook China to become the most populous country in the world. With multiple extreme weather events and ecological crises continuing to escalate, several world leaders have called the 2020s the "decisive decade" for climate action.