In the world: BTS, Oasis, Donald Trump… What should we expect in 2025?

On January 20, Donald Trump will be inaugurated 47^e President of the United States, eleven weeks after his large victory against Kamala Harris. Despite four indictments and a criminal conviction, the 78-year-old Republican made an unprecedented return to the White House at the end of an extraordinary campaign marked by two assassination attempts.

His sensational appointments – Elon Musk to the “Department of Government Efficiency” or the vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Health – already promise a new order in the United States and the world. His nationalism predicts the return of an all-powerful America, imposing its law, the elected president preferring transactional relations and balance of power to multilateralism.

He promised to stop the “transgender delirium” on his first day in the White House, to sign “a whole series of executive orders to close our border to illegal immigrants and stop the invasion of our country” and held, in December, threatening or controversial remarks about Panama, Greenland and Canada.

The Hindu pilgrimage known as “Kumbh Mela”, the largest gathering in the world, will be held in Prayagraj, in northern India, from January to February. Some 400 million Hindus are expected on the banks of the Ganges and the Yamuna and will form a gigantic ephemeral city. By immersing themselves in these sacred rivers, Hindu monks and pilgrims purify themselves of their sins, hoping to “free themselves from the vicious earthly cycle of life and death.”

This gathering takes place every three years alternately in four holy places. Some 120 million pilgrims flocked to the last Prayagraj gathering in 2013. Thirty-six people died in a stampede.

The “Kumbh Mela” or “Jug Festival” has its origins in Hindu mythology according to which for 12 days and 12 nights, gods and demons killed each other to recover the jug containing the elixir of immortality.

On one side, the two grumpy brothers of Britpop, on the other, the seven young and pretty kings of K-pop: Oasis and BTS, two music heavyweights, are making their comeback in 2025.

Oasis, led by the Gallagher brothers whose legendary rivalry got the better of the group in 2009, is reforming for a world tour this summer. Thanks to this reconciliation, they could each pocket around 50 million pounds, according to an expert. Nostalgic fans rushed for tickets. But this quest turned into chaos between endless waiting lists, crazy prices and fraudulent sites.

On the other side of the Earth, the group BTS promised its fans to meet again after June, when the seven singers will have finished their military service, obligatory in South Korea. With tens of millions of albums sold, the boy band created in 2013 generates billions for the South Korean economy.

Could the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions stop next year? Researchers are cautious: they are watching for signals from China, the leading polluting country, where the growth of CO emissions₂ emanating from the combustion of oil, coal and gas should be almost zero by 2024.

Given the importance of the country (30% of global emissions), the impact would be global. Glen Peters of the Global Carbon Budget would not be surprised if the global peak arrives in the next few years. “We are close, but we will need a few years of data to be certain,” he warns, however.

And, adds Ignacio Arróniz Velasco, of the E3G think tank, the world will not have to be content with stabilizing its emissions: it will then be necessary to reduce them quickly, to hope for carbon neutrality within three decades. “We won’t be able to relax,” he said.

When you love, you don’t count, and yet… In 2025, the question of the explosion in the number of meetings and the fatigue of players, faced with an overloaded schedule, will be central.

On the program in particular: the Club World Cup, expanded to 32 teams, which will deprive the players of their summer break, after a season marked by the inauguration of the new formula of the Champions League, with ever more matches – and of recipes.

This trend of endless increase in official matches will continue in 2026, with 16 new teams participating in the World Cup organized in Canada, Mexico and the United States, and therefore… 104 matches, compared to 64 previously .

Curious to find out who’s in the news The essentials? Join us on the number 1 business network in Luxembourg!