21 October 2026, as the history books will tell it on 21 October 2036.

In October 2026 the war in Ukraine briefly seemed to move. On 9 October President Trump announced a deal with Vladimir Putin on supplies of Russian diesel. The same day the US Treasury temporarily eased sanctions on Russian diesel, until April 2027.^1,2 A day later Trump told reporters: “I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”^3,4

Historians see that week as the moment the pressure changed direction. It was not the aggressor who had to give ground, but the country under attack. On 11 October Trump announced an ‘energy ceasefire’ that he said both sides had agreed to. Ukraine stopped striking Russian refineries, but Russia kept attacking Ukrainian energy facilities.^5,6,7

On 16 October Trump waived the main measures of a new US sanctions law against Russia just before they took effect. They included tariffs of up to 100 percent on large buyers of Russian oil and gas.^8,9 Two days later Ukraine attacked Russia with more than a thousand drones; oil storage sites burned in St Petersburg.^10,11 According to President Zelensky, the US was meanwhile holding back Patriot air-defence missiles that allies had already paid for. Secretary of State Rubio denied that the US wanted to harm Ukraine.^12,13 On 20 October Zelensky met US envoy Steve Witkoff and European leaders in Oslo.^13,14 A day later Witkoff and Putin talked in St Petersburg. A Kremlin adviser then said Russia was willing in principle to resume three-way talks with the US and Ukraine in November, but that the new proposals from Europe and Kyiv contained little of use.^15,16

Moscow drew the lesson from those weeks that would shape the rest of the decade: whoever keeps fighting gets concessions.

On 10 October 2025 a ceasefire took effect in Gaza.^1,3 By 20 October 2026, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, more than 1,500 Palestinians had nevertheless been killed since.^4,5,6 In early October 2026 the death toll since the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 stood at more than 74,000, according to the same ministry.^2,3

The ceasefire remained a ceasefire on paper. Reconstruction never got going, because no one wanted to pay for what could be destroyed again tomorrow. A generation of children grew up among the rubble, without school and without prospects. Without a political solution, radicalisation grew on both sides.

On 9 October 2026 the South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former judge at the International Criminal Court, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. A few hours later the Trump administration imposed sanctions on the court itself. Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared: “Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC.”^1,2,4 The court called the sanctions an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order, and wrote: “History will judge this moment.”^1,3

In this book, that judgement is harsh. A six-month grace period initially applied to many transactions with the court.^1,2,5 When it expired in April 2027, banks, insurers and software suppliers pulled out. The court in The Hague was largely paralysed and a handful of member states walked away. Trump had already called for that at the UN General Assembly on 22 September 2026: “I call on all nations that are members of the ICC to officially resign from this rogue institution immediately.”^6,7 A day later the Pacific island state of Nauru notified the UN that it was leaving the court; the withdrawal takes effect after one year.^8,9

With that, the last place where leaders had to answer for war crimes disappeared. What that meant can be read in Sudan (§ 4.1).

After US-Israeli strikes on Iran on 28 February 2026, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz.^1,2 From 13 April the US blockaded Iranian ports.^3,4 On 8 July, after Iranian attacks on merchant ships and US counter-strikes, Trump declared the interim ceasefire over.^5,6 On 20 October, according to Iranian state television, Iran’s security chief told Pakistan’s army chief that no enriched uranium would leave the country, and that there would be no talks with the US until its conditions were met.^7,8

Fuel prices even became an argument in the war in Ukraine (§ 1.1). In this way the fuel crisis of 2026 hit war, the economy, hunger and the climate at once. Governments subsidised fossil fuels to prevent unrest, and investment in the energy transition was postponed by another year, again and again (§ 5.1).

On 13 October 2026 the IMF projected global growth of 3.1 percent for 2026 and global inflation of 4.7 percent. That forecast assumed oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz would resume by March 2027.^1,2 In this book they did not, and inflation persisted.

The IMF also found that just 32 economies accounted for 95 percent of global growth, down from 54 in April. It warned of an AI-related stock market correction, rising government bond yields and high public debt.^1,2 According to the IMF, low-income countries were spending 14 percent of their government revenue on debt payments, up from 6 percent a decade earlier.^3,4 The warnings came true. The market correction hit pension funds and savers, and heavily indebted governments could not step in. The gap between the few countries that shared in the gains and everyone else became the economic story of the decade.

On 26 October 2025, after a siege of some eighteen months, the RSF militia took the Sudanese city of El Fasher.^1,2,3 In early November 2025 the international hunger classification system IPC officially confirmed famine in El Fasher and in Kadugli.^4,5 On 12 October 2026 the IPC warned of a growing risk of famine in Darfur and Kordofan, driven by war, displacement and drought.^6,7 On 19 October a drone strike on a market in Abyei, an area disputed by Sudan and South Sudan, killed at least 153 people, according to local officials. They blamed Sudan’s army; a Sudanese officer told AP the army was targeting RSF fuel tankers.^8,9

Hunger then spread across Kordofan, and the country effectively broke apart into territories held by rival armies. Because the International Criminal Court was being strangled at the same time (§ 2.1), no one stood trial for starving cities. The book of 2036 calls Sudan the crisis the world watched and let happen.

The UN World Food Programme projected that 318 million people would face crisis-level hunger or worse in 2026, more than double the number in 2019. Because of funding cuts, it said it could help only about a third of them. The US, the largest donor, cut its foreign aid, and other donor countries made cuts too.^1,2,3

What that meant became clear in Gaza (§ 1.2). On 19 October 2026 the World Food Programme announced that, for lack of funding, it was cutting food aid there by about a third: 500,000 people lose their monthly support and food parcels are halved.^7,8,9

In the years that followed, rich countries shifted even more money to defence and energy (§ 1.1, § 3.1). Those who received no help set out on the road. On the night of 8 to 9 October 2026 an overcrowded migrant boat bound for Yemen capsized off the coast of Djibouti. According to the UN migration agency IOM, at least 139 people died, 15 of them children.^4,5,6 In this book that was not an incident but an omen. The debate on migration hardened, leaving even less political room to tackle the causes.

In May 2026 the World Health Organization (WHO) declared an Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo a public health emergency of international concern.^1,2 It was the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment.^1,3 By 20 October Congo had recorded more than 9,500 confirmed infections and more than 4,600 deaths, according to government figures.^4,5 It was the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record.^4,6 Infections were also confirmed in Uganda and Kenya.^4,7,8 Uganda declared its outbreak over in late August.^4,13 On 21 October Nigeria confirmed its first case; according to the WHO, it was the fifth country to detect the virus in this outbreak.^12,13

Uganda closed its border with Congo in May.^8,11 The US admitted travellers who had been in Congo only after 21 days outside the country.^4,10 The WHO had advised against closing borders, and reported serious funding gaps for the response.^1,7,8,9

Historians see the outbreak as a test: do countries close their borders, or do they help pay for the response? In this book the world mostly chose the former. The virus kept circulating in East Africa well into 2027, and when a new epidemic came later, vaccines and emergency funds were once again not in place.

The COP31 climate summit was scheduled for 9 to 20 November 2026 in Antalya, with Türkiye as host. Following the previous summit in Belém, Brazil, it was to focus on implementation: putting the climate goals into practice.^1,2 In early October the World Meteorological Organization and the Copernicus climate service reported a rapidly strengthening El Niño, with record sea temperatures in the Pacific.^3,4 On 21 October the UN Environment Programme calculated that the world was heading for 2.6 degrees of warming by 2100 if countries kept their climate plans, and 2.8 degrees under current policies. That was about 0.1 degrees worse than a year earlier, partly because the US had left the Paris Agreement.^5,6,7

The strong El Niño made the following year especially hot. The summit fell in the middle of the fuel crisis (§ 3.1), and the short term won. Countries kept their targets on paper, but implementation slipped. Around 2030, 1.5 degrees of warming had been structurally reached. In the 2030s, the debate in coastal countries from Bangladesh to Egypt shifted from how to prevent it to what protection against the sea costs, and who pays.