List of world leaders not attending WEF 2025 in Davos

LONDON – It’s that time of year when the great and the good gather for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

A host of heads of state, politicians and business tycoons will attend the four-day event in the alpine resort, but what may be more important is which leaders are skipping the forum.

While Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated as US president on Monday, is expected to address the forum via live video link on Thursday, a number of key leaders will be absent from the event entirely.

These include Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian leader Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Of the Group of Seven industrialized nations (G7) – which includes the US, Europe’s biggest economies, Canada and Japan – the only head of state attending the summit in person is outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

The WEF says this year’s event – ​​”the 55th annual forum, which runs from Monday to Thursday” will bring together nearly 3,000 leaders from over 130 countries, with the gathering “demonstrating the critical need for dialogue in an increasingly and more uncertain”. He notes that 350 government leaders, including 60 heads of state and government, “will gather in Davos-Klosters to address pressing challenges and shape emerging opportunities.”

The theme of the event is “Collaboration for the Intelligent Age”, with the agenda focused on five key areas: reimagining growth, industries in the intelligent age, investing in people, maintaining the trust planted and rebuilding.

However, not all world leaders will be there to discuss these issues.

“The leaders of Brazil, China, India, who gave keynote speeches 10 years ago, are not there now. Russia has not been welcomed for several years, Keir Starmer will not be there. Macron will not be there.” Jan Aart Scholte, professor of global transformations and governance challenges at Leiden University, told CNBC on Thursday.

“True, the prime minister of Spain will be there and there are a couple of others, but the general picture of the heads of state, the governments that are there is that they are not the big players. I think if you went through a list of the G20, you would be a small minority [who are attending]”, he said.

No official reason is often given for the lack of participation in the WEF, but pressing domestic problems – ranging from slowing economic growth to political crises – are known to keep heads of government at home.

In recent years, there has also been some ambivalence about participating in an event that has been accused of being elitist and out of touch.

CNBC has reached out to the WEF for comment. The Forum has consistently stated that it provides a space where stakeholders from across business, government, academia, civil society, media and the arts can “meet on a global, impartial, not-for-profit platform”.

These people, it says, “come together to find common ground and seize opportunities for positive change on major global issues.”

A number of big names will still join this year’s summit – an event that began in 1971 under the stewardship of Klaus Schwab, who remained executive chairman of the event until earlier this year.

Ding Xuexiang, Vice Premier of China, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Javier Milei, Prime Minister of Argentina and Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa, will give speeches in Davos this week.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will also attend, as will leaders of global organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization.

Sven Smit, a senior partner at WEF strategic partner McKinsey & Company, said in online comments that it would be a priority for attendees to “understand what the leaders who are in Davos have in mind.”

“You can’t fully predict it, there are themes that people suggest, they range from growth to sustainability, but what distills down as the Davos theme is not fully predictable and that’s the interesting part,” Smit said.

However, many of the Western institutions present have, in recent years, found themselves on the wrong side of a push against globalization by populist leaders like Trump, and countries like Russia and China.

The WEF, too, has gone against this anti-establishment trend, Scholte noted, and while the presence of leaders like Trump might not have been required in the past, there is now an acknowledgment that the world has changed.

“I don’t think the promoters of a liberal and open world economy speak as disparagingly of, say, opposing forces and views as they might have done, say, before the global financial crisis,” he said.

“I think there’s a little bit more modesty that, no, sometimes it doesn’t quite work. And no, we haven’t always given enough consideration to those who feel left out of it.”

However, he stressed that the WEF was still a draw for many business and political leaders.

“There are various indications that a site like the World Economic Forum is not as strong a magnet as it might have been a few decades ago,” Scholte said. “But the idea that it’s no longer a magnet, and the idea that there also aren’t certain areas within world economic governance where it can still be very strong, I think would be wrong.”