The global economy will reduce its growth rate to 2.6% in 2026, which is three-tenths lower than the 2.9% recorded last year and represents the lowest rate since 2020. This is reflected in the latest projections from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which places global growth at 2.7% for 2027.
The document released this Friday forecasts that developing countries will increase their GDP by 4% this year and by 4.4% in 2027, below the 4.7% estimated for 2025. In parallel, advanced economies will limit their expansion to 1.6% both this year and the next, after having grown by 1.7% in 2025.
In more detail, UNCTAD projects a GDP increase of 2.1% for the United States in 2026, which will moderate to 1.8% in 2027. In the case of the eurozone, the agency expects an increase of 1% this year and 1.2% next year.
Among the major emerging markets, China will cut its growth to 4.5% in 2026 and 2027, after the 5% projected for 2025, while India would maintain this year the 7.3% of the previous year and advance by 6.8% in 2027.
The forecasts from the UN agency also include the behavior of international trade: the exchange of goods and services would increase by around 4% this year in real terms, after global trade reached a historic high of 35 trillion dollars (31.2 trillion euros) in 2025.
"The landscape of global trade is changing," the report notes, highlighting a contraction of over 20% in trade flow between China and the United States since 2024, while East Asia has intensified its exchanges with China and North America.
In this line, the study emphasizes that governments are increasingly resorting to industrial, trade, financial, and technological policies to pursue economic and national security objectives. At the same time, it warns that access to markets and higher value-added activities now depends more on technology, finance, and geopolitics.
"AI products are now the main driver of merchandise trade," says UNCTAD, which warns that the rise of trade associated with AI does not automatically translate into broad and shared development benefits.
The report adds that, based on the data from 2020-2025, developed economies concentrate nearly 70% of the value of new projects announced in high-value strategic sectors, such as semiconductors, energy transition technologies, and AI infrastructure. For their part, developing economies only lead in the field of critical minerals and strategic materials, where they absorb 60% of the new foreign direct investment in that category.