Conflict has become the background condition of international life, and technology now sits at its center. Vast investment flows into technologies of war, but comparatively little goes toward technologies designed from the outset to save lives, protect human dignity, prevent violence, and rebuild trust. That is PeaceTech and this report is its benchmark.
Today, the Kluz Prize for PeaceTech is launching The Annual Frontier Report 2026, the inaugural edition of its annual benchmark report on frontier technologies serving peace and humanity. The central argument of the report is that the frontier has moved: the tools that defined the field a few years ago remain essential, but the action, risk, and opportunity now lie in nine emerging trends.
The report examines those nine trends, offers a framework for assessing whether frontier initiatives truly serve societal benefit, makes the investment case for PeaceTech, and maps risks and opportunities across frontier technologies. It concludes with reflections on the decade ahead and an index of 100 established, emerging, and frontier use cases.
This report draws on five years of the Kluz Prize for PeaceTech, including more than 500 applications from innovators in over 82 countries, along with desk research, the Prize's ongoing scan of the field, and Kluz Ventures' investment experience.
Please find several highlights below and the full report can be found HERE.
Nine trends shaping the PeaceTech frontier
The report identifies nine technological shifts that could shape PeaceTech in the years ahead:
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From analytic AI to agentic AI: AI is moving beyond analyzing and predicting events toward systems that can act, including by generating negotiation options, running simulations, and facilitating dialogue.
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From single machines to autonomous and swarm robotics: Robotics is moving from individual systems toward coordinated and increasingly autonomous fleets, with potential applications in areas such as demining and humanitarian logistics.
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From satellite data to space infrastructure and services: Space technologies are expanding beyond individual satellite images toward infrastructure and services that can support humanitarian response, resilient communications, environmental monitoring, civilian protection, and conflict prevention.
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From “more data” to trustworthy data: As more data is collected and used in conflict settings, questions around provenance, privacy, data sovereignty, security, and legitimacy are becoming increasingly important.
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From classical to quantum-era assumptions: Quantum technologies remain largely on the horizon for PeaceTech, but developments in areas such as secure communications and sensing could eventually create new applications for humanitarian and peacebuilding efforts.
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From digital-only to biosecurity: Advances in biotechnology are creating opportunities in areas such as pathogen surveillance, verification, and resilience, while also creating significant governance and dual-use risks.
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From monitoring conflict to verifying restraint: New technologies could strengthen the ability to verify ceasefires, arms-control agreements, non-proliferation commitments, and other agreements intended to reduce conflict.
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From technology for resource security to conflict prevention: Technologies could help better anticipate pressures to natural resources and anticipate future conflict.
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From vulnerable systems to resilient critical infrastructure: New approaches to infrastructure resilience aim to keep essential systems—including energy, water, healthcare, communications, financial networks, and public digital services—functioning during conflict and crisis.
How to assess the frontier?
The report introduces a Peace Dividend Test to consider whether technologies can demonstrate a credible contribution to peace. Per the test, PeaceTech applications should demonstrate a credible contribution to:
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Saving lives: helping to reduce death and injury in conflict and crisis
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Preventing violence: heading off escalation before it turns lethal
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Protecting civilians: shielding non-combatants and the displaced from harm
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Reducing human suffering: easing the humanitarian toll of conflict
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Strengthening humanitarian response: making relief faster, safer, and better-coordinated
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Rebuilding trust: restoring the relationships and institutions conflict destroys
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Strengthening resilient societies: hardening the systems on which peaceful life depends
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Safeguarding human dignity: keeping the human person at the centre of every application
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Ethical oversight: using independent, multi-stakeholder mechanism ensures ongoing accountability
The next decade
The report illustrates several plausible destinations for the PeaceTech field a decade out. These range from AI assisted mediation to autonomous humanitarian logistics to open and resilient space infrastructure for humanitarian response. It also suggests several technologies to watch that are not currently PeaceTech but could become decisive in the future—both for or against peace. These include general-purpose breakthroughs such as brain-computer interfaces and digital twins or societies and innovations in the expanding space economy such as space traffic management and commercial space stations and orbital economies.
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Read the full report HERE.