wild cards - The EFI BioGateway

What are wild cards in horizon scanning? Find out how Finland is preparing for the future.

Can you remember autumn 2019 and what expectations you had for the forthcoming 2020s? What would you have responded to somebody picturing you in the possible implications of a global pandemic, Russia attacking its neighbouring country, or Trump pushing even more provocative ideas into reality?

Two foresight reports released in September 2025 illustrate the questions that policy-making institutions ask today when navigating an unstable world. The most likely scenarios or single-risk impact analysis no longer suffice amid the complex systemic challenges.

The European Commission’s strategic foresight report “Resilience 2.0” was released this autumn as the first of its kind for the 2024–2029 Commission. Annual foresight reports have been produced since 2020 to inform EU policy priorities and long-term policy thinking on cross-cutting themes.

This time, in addition to synthesising global developments and EU-specific challenges, the report also highlights relevant emerging signals of change. But what are the signals?

These signals are emerging trends and issues that may appear marginal today but could become important for the EU in the future. They are collected in an inter-institutional horizon scanning process led by the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS).

In Finland, since 1993, each electoral term, the Government submits to the Parliament a Report on the Future. The first part of this report of the current Government came out in September 2025 (in Finnish), which describes four alternative future states:

The worlds of cooperation
Tech giants
Confrontations and
Rupture

The report explores how to prepare for these futures today.

The inter-institutional work is based on a systematic analysis of change factors, critical uncertainties and alternative paths of development up to 2045. The report also contains wild cards – unlikely events that, if realised, would have direct impacts in Finland. Wild cards are introduced to test whether the four scenarios capture very different types of developments.

Weak signals and wild cards are not to be taken as predictions

It is not by chance that weak signals and wild cards gain visibility in strategic foresight reports. Without making a thorough analysis of the possible implications of such developments, short descriptions included in the reports illustrate raised alertness to early warnings.

Instead of mere outlooks, foresight reports encourage exploration of ‘the imaginable’ in addition to the evidence of past trends and change factors:

On the horizon: race to space. Technology is being developed to source critical minerals and raw materials from space, solar geoengineering to reduce global warming, and dual-use infrastructures to tackle space debris. Who leads the race for investments and for accruing knowledge and evidence also defines the rules of the game?

Wild card: collapse of the Gulf Stream! What if climate change adaptation in Europe becomes protection against frost in agriculture and food supply, in water supply and the transport and energy infrastructures?

On the horizon: understanding the dark biosphere and deep-sea ecosystems. Science and technology advance in deep seas and deep underground. This opens doors both for improving nature protection and for the overexploitation of new resources.

Wild card: rise of Africa! What if Sub-Saharan countries break out of poverty and turn an abundance of resources into an economic miracle, improved governance and population growth? What kind of multi-polar world could we see?

On the horizon: a penny for your thoughts. Neural data collected by biometric wearable devices can be combined with algorithms that enable steering of opinions and behaviours at the scale of individuals and societies. Boom by improved sustainability or doom for humanity?

Wild card: FinTech world! What if the digitisation of financial services and money led to an era of FinTech companies, cryptocurrencies and microloan platforms? Who is better off without central banks?

Strategic foresight keeps multiple scenarios on the play

Signals are of little value unless we assess their future implications in a specific context and take action today. Strategic foresight tools are adjusted to the world where we live: in a stable system, outlooks are useful at least in the short term, while in turmoil, such analogies can be destructive.

The EC strategic foresight emphasises a clear understanding of long-term trends and emerging issues as a basis for major policy initiatives. Signals of change are raw materials for scenarios to wind-tunnel policy making.

The Finnish Report on Future develops a shared understanding of the crucial questions concerning the future. None of the four scenarios is assumed to happen. Instead, scenarios are proposed as a framework for regular monitoring of the operating environment, its changes and possible implications.

Strategic foresight seeks:

Improved preparedness and rapid response capacity

Stress-testing strategies and assessing possible implications beyond the direct impacts of decisions

Capacities and a foresight culture for regular scanning and scoping

Long view to trigger curiosity for new ideas

Explore horizon scanning

Discussion about weak signals or wild cards does not pave the way for a specific event to occur but instead builds the capacity to think beyond trends and the impacts of known change factors. Which questions do you consider important for us to be asking today?

Author: paivi.pelli @efi.int

Tag: wild cards

Wild cards are here: forget plain future outlooks, time to rethink horizon scanning

Weak signals and wild cards are not to be taken as predictions

Strategic foresight keeps multiple scenarios on the play

Explore horizon scanning

Further reading

Read more