2020s

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From top left, clockwise: COVID-19 became a global pandemic in 2020 and dominated the early part of the decade, as the disease and virus that causes the disease were deemed an international public health emergency until 2023; A Ukrainian T-72 tank driving in the Donetsk region during the Russian invasion of Ukraine; A U.S. Air Force plane carries passengers out of Afghanistan during the 2021 fall of Kabul at the end of the War in Afghanistan; Cosmic Cliffs at the edge of NGC 3324 within the Carina Nebula, one of the first photographs taken by the James Webb Space Telescope; Damage following an Israeli airstrike on Gaza City as part of the Israel-Hamas war; An AI image generated by DALL-E, following significant advances in generative AI during the decade

The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties" or "two thousand twenties"; shortened to "the '20s" and also known as "The Twenties") is the current decade that began on January 1, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2029.^[1][2]

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.^[3] The pandemic led to a global economic recession, a sustained rise in global inflation for the first time since the 1970s, and a global supply chain crisis.

Several anti-government demonstrations and revolts occurred in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including a continuation of those in Hong Kong against extradition legislation; protests against certain local, state and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic; others around the world, particularly in the United States, against racism and police brutality; one in India against agriculture and farming acts; one in Israel against judicial reforms; another in Indonesia against the omnibus law on jobs; ongoing protests and strikes in France against pension reform; an ongoing political crisis in Peru, Bangladesh, Armenia, and Thailand; and many in Belarus, Eswatini, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and Russia against various forms of governmental jurisdiction, corruption and authoritarianism; along with citizen riots in Japan, the United States, and Brazil in an attempt to overturn election results. The world population grew to over 8 billion people, and in 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world.^[4][5]

Ongoing military conflicts include the Myanmar civil war, the Ethiopian civil conflict, the Kivu conflict, the Mali War, the Yemeni civil war, the Somali Civil War, Sudanese civil war, the Syrian civil war, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the Israel–Hamas war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine became the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, and resulting in a refugee crisis, disruptions to global trade, and an exacerbation of economic inflation. In 2023, a Hamas-led attack marked the first invasion of Israel since 1948, triggering an Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory. The invasion has led to the displacement of nearly all 2.3 million Gaza residents, a humanitarian crisis, a famine, and a polio epidemic, sparking global protests against Israel. Smaller conflicts include the insurgency in the Maghreb, the Iraq insurgency, the Philippine drug war, and the Mexican drug war. The year 2021 saw the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, ending twenty years of war in that country, and leading to the republican loyalist uprising against the new emirate government.

With multiple extreme weather events magnifying in the early 2020s, several world leaders have called it the "decisive decade" for climate action as ecological crises continue to escalate.^[6][7] In February 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes killed up to 62,000 people in Turkey and Syria; this event fell within the top five deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century.

There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field.^[8] Generative AI-based applications such as ChatGPT and DALL-E have accumulated over billions of users, and allow users to instantly generate complex texts, images, art, and video, comparable to the sophistication of human work, so models like GPT-3 and Stable Diffusion have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in generating human-quality text, images, and other creative content. For example, GPT-3 can write articles, poems, and even code, while Stable Diffusion can create highly realistic images from simple text prompts.^[9] Other technological advances have also been made, impacting many, such as the widespread use of teleconferencing, online learning, streaming services, e-commerce and food delivery services to compensate for lockdowns ordered by governments around the world during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent social media applications on the Internet like Threads, BeReal, Clubhouse, BlueSky, Gettr, and Truth Social launched, and introduced recent types of social media, like audio-based and short-form content, further progressing in digital technology. Art forms, such as NFTs, also emerged as well. 5G networks have launched around the globe at the start of the decade as well, and became prevalent in smartphones. Research into outer space greatly accelerated in the 2020s, with the United States mainly dominating space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, Lunar Gateway, and Artemis program.^[10][11] Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are being used for remote collaboration, meetings, and training. For example, VR can be used to create virtual meeting spaces where people can interact with each other as if they were in the same room. AR can be used to overlay digital information on top of the real world, making it easier for people to collaborate on projects. Contactless payments and mobile wallets have become more widespread, offering convenient and secure payment options. The pandemic also accelerated the adoption of contactless payments, as people became more concerned about the spread of germs. Mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, have also become more popular, as they offer a convenient and secure way to pay for goods and services.^{[citation needed]}