World Economic Forum's annual meeting shifts to Singapore next year

Annual gathering of public and private sector leaders will return to Swiss town of Davos in 2022

The World Economic Forum's annual event will take place in Singapore in May next year, shifting from its regular home of Davos-Klosters in Switzerland. Reuters

The World Economic Forum will convene a Special Annual Meeting 2021 in Singapore from 13-16 May.

The event will return to its usual home in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos-Klosters in 2022, the organisation said in a statement on Monday. A Davos Agenda event will take place online next year between 25-29 January.

The in-person meeting in Singapore will focus on addressing some of the pressing challenges presented to the global economy as a result of Covid-19.

“A global leadership summit is of crucial importance to address how we can recover together,” said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum.

“The Special Annual Meeting 2021 will be a place for leaders from business, government and civil society to meet in person for the first time since the start of the global pandemic. Public-private cooperation is needed more than ever to rebuild trust and address the fault lines that emerged in 2020.”

The event is usually held in Davos in late January but has been postponed as a result of the pandemic, which has infected more than 67.5 million people and caused more than 1.5 million deaths globally, according to Worldometer.

The change in location reflects the forum’s priority of safeguarding the health and safety of participants and the host community, the Forum said.

Ahead of the Special Annual Meeting 2021, the Forum will also host a Global Technology Governance Summit in Tokyo from 6-7 April next year, which will discuss the responsible design and deployment of emerging technologies through public-private cooperation.