The world isn’t getting worse; it’s getting better: 44 good news stories to start 2026 with optimism

We are closing the year with a tradition: an optimistic list that is neither exhaustive nor impartial, because it only contains good news.

I do it this way to address a paradox: most people believe that the world is regressing and that we are heading toward chaos, even though the data clearly show that this perception is false. The world is not getting worse — it’s getting better. That doesn’t mean it’s a perfect place. Not even a good place. We still see wars, injustices, and diseases. A minority of the population owns most of the wealth, while 10% survive on barely $3 a day. Poverty is commonplace. But of all the global scenarios we’ve known (not imagined or desired, but known), this is the best.

Recognizing that we’re making progress unsettles many people, because they fear it will make us complacent. But I think the opposite: to keep moving forward, it’s helpful to know you’re advancing.

Happy New Year,

Kiko

The good news

❤️ 1. We’re living longer. Global life expectancy has risen seven years since 2000, to 73 years. | OWiD

👶🏼 2. Fewer children are dying. Mortality before the age of 15 has been halved in two decades. | OWiD

💰 3. Extreme poverty is decreasing. In 2000, 36% of the planet suffered from extreme poverty; now that figure is 10%. China has lifted 50 million people out of poverty in the last five years. | OWiD

👩‍🎓 4. The percentage of girls attending secondary school has risen from 47% to 68% since 2000. Girls are now on par with boys and outnumber them in university. | OWiD

💡 5. Millions of people gained access to electricity. Since 2000, the global percentage with access to electricity has risen from 78% to 92%. In Rwanda, it rose from 6% to 64%. | World Bank

📱 6. How much would you pay for WhatsApp? The average European would ask for €500 ($587) a month to stop using it. And what about your airbag or your daughter’s vaccinations? Surely more than you paid for them. But that value doesn’t count towards GDP: we’re richer than it seems. | HBR

🧬 7. A baby received the first personalized gene therapy. KJ was born with a rare metabolic disease; a custom CRISPR treatment was designed for him, and he is now improving. | Nature

💀 8. We’ve put a face to the third human species. Denisovans lived alongside us and Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago. In 2010, we only had a fragment of a Denisovan finger; now we also have a skull. Their DNA is still in us. | Science, EL PAÍS

⚡ 9. Renewables surpassed coal as a source of electricity. For the first time in history and globally: 34% versus 33%. | Ember

🏳️‍🌈 10. Homophobia has receded in Europe. The percentage of people with homophobic attitudes has decreased since 1998: in Spain (from 33% to 19%), in Germany (from 29% to 15%), and in Sweden (from 21% to 9%). | OWiD

🔬 11. Large language models are doing science. One AI won a gold medal at the Mathematical Olympiad — something not expected until 2043 — ; another reproduced in days a discovery that took biologists years; and a third optimized a chemical reaction, saving weeks of laboratory work. | Science

🚗 12. Helsinki went a year without any traffic fatalities. How? By lowering speed limits to 30 km/h, narrowing lanes, and prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists. | FC

🦫 13. Eight beavers did in weeks what bureaucracy couldn’t accomplish in seven years. In the Czech Republic, a family of these animals built a dam with rocks, mud, and branches exactly where the government had planned it. They saved the government €1.2 million ($1.4 million). “Nothing beavers do surprises me,” said an expert. | National Geographic

🇪🇸 14. Spain celebrated 50 years of democracy. We are a healthier, richer, more educated, and more egalitarian country than in 1975. | EL PAÍS

💉 15. Thousands of babies avoided the hospital (and you don’t even know it). In 2023, Spain began vaccinating newborns against bronchiolitis. My daughter was one of the first. Suddenly, hospital admissions fell by 75%, and 10,000 baby hospitalizations were avoided. Was Luna one of them? The disasters we avoid are like bullets that miss your house without you noticing. | EL PAÍS

🚭 16. Teenagers are the most sober generation in decades. The percentage of young Spaniards who smoke daily has fallen from 20% to 4% since the 1990s. Those who drink alcohol every week have dropped from 31% to 16%. Cannabis, cocaine, and amphetamine use have also declined. | Estudes

🧠 17. The global suicide rate has fallen by 50% since 2000. In Spain, it fell by 20%. | OWiD

👶 18. More girls are being born in China. Sex-selective abortions are decreasing: in 2010, 117 boys were born for every 100 girls, and now 110, closer to the natural ratio (105). | OWiD

💳 19. 73% of women in emerging countries have a bank account. In 2014, it was only 50%. | World Bank

👩‍💼 20. The number of women on boards of directors has increased fivefold in the U.K. Female leaders have gone from 9% to 43% in just over a decade. | Gov.uk

👩‍🚀 21. Sunita Williams went to space for eight days, stayed for months, and broke a record. She got “stuck” on the ISS due to technical problems, but took advantage of the opportunity to break the women’s record for spacewalks: 62 hours. | EL PAÍS

🚀 22. The record for space launches was broken again. There were 309 orbital attempts, three times the norm. | Planet4589

🔭 23. A revolutionary telescope was built. The Vera C. Rubin telescope will scan the entire sky every three days. Every night it will send out millions of alerts — aided by algorithms — to flag objects that move or change in some way. We will see cosmic explosions and galaxies being born. | EL PAÍS

☀️ 24. Solar energy has tripled in seven years. Now solar panel farms can be seen by satellites, from Badajoz to Tibet. | EL PAÍS

🔋 25. In Africa, electricity is delivered rooftop to rooftop. Households without access to the electrical grid are buying solar kits and paying for them in installments with their cell phones: these kits power lights, phones, TVs, and fans. | Climate Drift

🇨🇳 26. China announced its first absolute emissions reduction goal. The country promised at the U.N. to cut emissions by more than 7% by 2035. It will not do so by reducing its energy consumption, but by significantly increasing the share of solar and wind power. | Nature

🌍 27. Projected emissions for 2040 are 40% lower than 10 years ago. The scenario without action was 50 billion tons of CO₂, and now we are on track to reach around 30 billion tons. | Gates Notes

🌊 28. The high seas will have legal protection for the first time. Seventy percent of the planet is international waters, but only 1% was protected: it was a no-man’s land. In 2025, 79 countries ratified a historic treaty to create marine reserves there. | EL PAÍS

🏊 29. Parisians are swimming in the Seine again. Swimming had been banned for 100 years due to pollution. This year, three areas reopened near the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame. | CNN

🌾 30. Agricultural productivity is increasing. The world produces 250% more grain than in 1961 with only 14% more cultivated land. Without this progress, we would have devastated forests and ecosystems to feed ourselves. | OWiD

📱 31. An AI-powered SMS prediction saved crops in India. During the last monsoon, 40 million farmers received a warning: the rains would arrive soon and then stop. It was an unusual pattern, but thanks to the message, they were able to respond in time. | Le Figaro

👁️ 32. An implant allows blind people to read again. A millimeter-sized chip, thinner than a human hair, is inserted under the retina and connected to glasses with a camera. In a trial with 38 patients with macular degeneration, 84% were able to read again. | Stanford

🚕 33. More self-driving cars. California’s driverless robotaxis traveled 5 million miles in 2025. | OWiD

💊 34. A new non-opioid pain reliever is here. It reduces postoperative pain as effectively as opioids but without the risk of addiction. | Works in Progress

🥜 35. Introducing allergens to babies works. Since early and gradual introduction was recommended, peanut allergies have dropped by 43% in the U.S. | NPR

💉 36. Obesity is falling in the U.S. Twelve percent of the population is now taking GLP-1 inhibitors such as Ozempic or Wegovy. The results are striking — weight losses of up to 15% — and the effects extend beyond the individual: in households with users, spending on fast food drops by 8%. | Gallup, Cornell

❤️‍🩹 37. Heart attacks are less deadly. In 1970, 40% of patients hospitalized for a heart attack died; today that figure has dropped to 10%. One study calls it a “medical miracle.” | Stanford

🎗️ 38. Cancer survival rates have doubled in 50 years. “We’re in a golden age for cancer research, with advances in digital, genomics, data science and AI reimagining what’s possible,” says Cancer Research UK. | CRUK

📡 39. We forget how isolated we used to be. In 1815, more than 2,000 soldiers died in a battle that shouldn’t have been fought: the war was over, but they didn’t know it. | Freethink

🍭 40. I heard this story: “I’m 80 years old, and somehow I woke up in my 32-year-old body. Just for one day. I wake up to little hands tugging at the blankets: ‘Mum, wake up!’ they shout. We pile into the car, kids arguing over seatbelts. Someone drops a snack. I used to get so frustrated. But today I soak in the noise and the chaos because I know my car will be quiet and spotless for many years to come. At bedtime, I don’t skip pages of the story. I read every single word. And then I ask: ‘Can we read one more book?’” | The Breeze

🐱 41. I read this: Amsterdam is building tiny staircases so cats don’t drown in its canals. | Euronews

📹 42. I found this video: “Two dudes in 2003, unaware they were making a legendary song.” The musicians play a concert on a campus. There’s hardly anyone there. But they perform a song that would end up becoming a generational anthem. It’s moving to witness the beginning of something — when not even its creators suspect it. | Reddit

📺 43. I was blown away by this: Millions of people understand the inner workings of ChatGPT thanks to a YouTube video. A three-hour video. Recorded by the expert who best explains this technology. Cutting-edge knowledge, free and for anyone, in Bogotá or San Francisco. This is also the internet. | Andrej Karpathy

📮 44. And a reader sent me this letter. “I read your 2023 list during the uncertain process of chemotherapy treatment. Perhaps that’s why I especially appreciated your positive outlook. Today I am living proof of one of the points on the 2024 list: ‘Medical innovations don’t stop.’ The treatment has been a success, and I’m here to tell the tale. The world isn’t getting worse, it’s getting better.”

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