2020s

The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties" shortened to "the '20s" and referred to as the twenties) is the current decade, which began on January 1, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2029.

The 2020s began with the COVID-19 pandemic — the first reports of the virus were published on December 31, 2019, though the first cases are said to have appeared nearly a month earlier — which caused a global economic recession as well as continuing financial inflation concerns and a global supply chain crisis. Multiple international demonstrations occurred in the early 2020s, including a continuation of those in Hong Kong that started in the late 2010s against extradition legislation, protests against certain local, state and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, others around the world against racism and police brutality, more in India against agriculture and farming acts, and, most recently, ones in Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and Russia against various forms of governmental jurisdiction and authoritarianism.

The private space race also greatly accelerated in the early 2020s, as did military conflicts such as the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Tigray War, the conflict between Gaza and Israel, the Fall of Kabul (which marked the end of the 20-year War in Afghanistan), and the Russian invasion of Ukraine (the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, having resulted in an immense refugee crisis).

With many extreme weather events worsening in the early 2020s, several world leaders have called it the "decisive decade" for climate action as ecological crises continue to escalate. 5G networks also launched around the globe at the start of the decade, and became prevalent in smartphones.

Politics and conflicts

Major conflicts

The prominent wars of the decade include:

International wars

Civil wars

Revolutions and major protests

Successful revolutions and otherwise major protests of the decade include, but are not limited to:

Nuclear proliferation

Terrorist attacks

''Note: To be included, entries must be notable (have a stand-alone article) and described by a consensus of reliable sources as "terrorism". They also must have 100 or more fatalities reported.''

The most prominent terrorist attacks committed against civilian populations during the decade include, but are not limited to:

Political trends

Electoral trends

Having suffered decline in the years after the Great Recession, the centre-left politics and the 1990s political model (like progressivism, liberalism, social democracy, and third way policies) experienced a resurgence across Europe and the Anglosphere in the early 2020s, with ''New Statesman'' suggesting various causes, including natural shifts in the electoral cycle and conservatives' unpopularity among university graduates and voters under the age of 40.

Deaths

Sitting leaders that died in office:

In 2020: Sheik Sabah al-Sabah, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, and Pierre Nkurunziza.

In 2021: Idriss Déby, John Magufuli, and Jovenel Moïse.

In 2022: Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Elizabeth II

Former world leaders who died:

In 2020: Hosni Mubarak, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, John Turner, Daniel arap Moi, Pranab Mukherjee, Amadou Toumani Touré, Jerry Rawlings, Mamadou Tandja, Tabaré Vázquez, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Pierre Buyoya, John Cremona, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, Kuniwo Nakamura, Litokwa Tomeing, Moussa Traoré, Pascal Lissouba, Branko Kostić, Lee Teng-hui, Benjamin Mkapa, Miloš Jakeš, Rafael Leonardo Callejas Romero, Abdul Halim Khaddam, Joachim Yhombi-Opango, Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo, Mike Moore, and Janez Stanovnik.

In 2021: Gustavo Noboa, Ali Mahdi Muhammad, Didier Ratsiraka, Bonfoh Abass, Mamnoon Hussain, Arturo Armando Molina, Hissène Habré, Jorge Sampaio, Abdelkader Bensalah, Kenneth Kaunda, Anerood Jugnauth, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Enrique Bolaños, Roh Tae-woo, Chun Doo-hwan, Benigno Aquino III, Carlos Menem, F. W. de Klerk, James Fitz-Allen Mitchell, Norodom Ranariddh, Kinza Clodumar, and Karolos Papoulias.

In 2022: Toshiki Kaifu, Ernest Shonekan, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Christos Sartzetakis, Amos Sawyer, Rupiah Banda, Karl Offmann, Ayaz Mutallibov, Dušan Čkrebić, Mwai Kibaki, Leonid Kravchuk, Stanislav Shushkevich, Romeo Morri, Bujar Nishani, Evaristo Carvalho, Jacob Nena, Shinzo Abe, José Eduardo dos Santos, Luis Echeverría, Francisco Morales Bermúdez, Fidel V. Ramos, Mikhail Gorbachev, Balakh Sher Mazari, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Jiang Zemin, Adolfas Šleževičius, Edgar Savisaar and Pope Benedict XVI.

Prominent political events

Coups

Africa

Americas

Asia

Europe

World leaders

: 2020 – 2021 – 2022 – 2023

Assassinations and attempts

Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include:

Disasters

Non-natural disasters

Aviation

General

Marine

Natural disasters

Earthquakes and tsunamis

''Note: This table is a chronological list of earthquakes reported with 7.5 or greater or that have reported at least 100 fatalities.''

Tropical cyclones

Tornadoes

Floods, avalanches, and mudslides

''Note: This section reports only floods with 200 or more deaths and avalanches and landslides involving 30 or more deaths.''

Volcanic eruptions

Droughts, heat waves, and wildfires

Pollution

Other natural events

Beginning in 2019 until 2022, a huge swarm of desert locusts threatened to engulf massive portions of the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Economics

Events

2020

*The Brexit withdrawal agreement went into effect at the end of January 2020 with the UK completing its economic withdrawal from the EU at the end of that year.
* The United States, Mexico, and Canada signed the USMCA agreement, which came into effect on 1 July 2020.

2021

* The African Continental Free Trade Area, encompassing 54 of the African Union states comes into effect.
* ''Ever Given'', a large container ship, runs aground in the Suez Canal for a week causing massive disruption of global trade.
* El Salvador became the first country to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, after the Legislative Assembly votes 62–84 to pass a bill submitted by President Nayib Bukele classifying the cryptocurrency as such.

2022

* The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the largest free trade area in the world, comes into effect for Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Japan, Laos, New Zealand, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Trade

The World Trade Organization reported that trade growth had stagnated and that trade restrictions were increasing as the decade began. The sectors most affected by import restrictions were mineral and fuel oils (17.7%), machinery and mechanical appliances (13%), electrical machinery and parts (11.7%), and precious metals (6%). Regional trade agreements were also found to be increasing.

Stock markets

Crashes

Cybersecurity and hacking

Health

Epidemics/Outbreaks

Pandemics

Science and technology

Space

2020

* Space company SpaceX sent two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station on 30 May 2020, marking the first time a private company completed a crewed orbital spaceflight mission.
* NASA launched the ''Perseverance'' rover and ''Ingenuity'' helicopter drone on 30 July 2020 as part of their Mars 2020 mission to search for signs of ancient life on Mars. On 19 April 2021, the ''Ingenuity'' helicopter drone performed the first powered controlled flight by an aircraft on a planet other than Earth.
* The Royal Astronomical Society announced the detection of phosphine gas in Venus' atmosphere on 14 September 2020, which is known to be a strong predictor for the presence of microbial life.

2021

*China sends Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming and Tang Hongbo to assemble and then occupy and work aboard the Tiangong Space Station.
*Following the formal releases of three videos of UFOs (also known as UAPs) in 2020, a report on the subject by the United States Intelligence Community would be published on 25 June 2021 with the report concluding that UFOs existed. This would be the first time a government would officially confirm the existence of UFOs, though no conclusion was made on what these phenomena were, extraterrestrial or otherwise.
*On 11 July 2021, Virgin Galactic became the first spaceflight company to independently launch a paying civilian into outer space using the 50-mile high definition of outer space, having flown Virgin Galactic founder Sir Richard Branson above the 50 mile mark, enabling him and the rest of the crew to experience approximately 3 minutes of weightlessness above Earth's atmosphere.
*In July 2021, Blue Origin became the first spaceflight company to launch a fully automated spacecraft with civilian passengers into space, carrying its founder Jeff Bezos and three others. Two of the flight's crew members, Dutch student Oliver Daemen (age 18) and American aviator Wally Funk (age 82), became both the youngest and oldest people respectively to go to space (Funk's record was beaten nearly 3 month's later when actor William Shatner entered space onboard Blue Origin NS-18, at the age of 90).
*The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on 25 December 2021, 12:20 UTC using an Ariane 5 launch vehicle from Kourou, French Guiana.

2022

* The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully made contact with Dimorphos, in a test operated by NASA to test potential planetary defense to near-Earth objects.
* NASA successfully launched Artemis 1, an uncrewed Moon-orbiting mission, after several months of delays.

Artificial intelligence

* DeepMind solves the protein folding problem to 90 percent accuracy, a 50-year-old grand challenge, at CASP14 in 2020.
* Text-to-image AI art systems like DALL-E (1 and 2) and Stable Diffusion are announced, capable of generating highly detailed and realistic images from text prompts.

Communications and electronics

* 5G became increasingly widespread by 2020.
*By 2020, 3D printing had reached decent quality and affordable pricing which allowed many people to own 3D printers.
* 8K resolution and 4K resolution becomes prevalent in consumer electronics.

Software and electronic platforms

* Support for Adobe Flash Player ended on 31 December 2020.
*Windows 11 is released on 5 October 2021, succeeding Windows 10.
*Support for Internet Explorer ended on 15 June 2022.

Technology

*The BBC
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