The World Economic Forum has scrapped its plans to hold an in-person annual meeting in Davos next month, extending a two-year run of enforced changes of plan for the high-octane networking event amid continued uncertainty over the Omicron outbreak.
The annual gathering of executives, world leaders and activists had been due to take place between January 17 and January 21 in the Swiss ski resort that has become known for elite agenda-setting. A statement from the WEF said it would be replaced by a series of online sessions, with another in-person event planned for some time early in the summer of 2022.
The forum’s last in-person annual meeting took place in January 2020, just as Covid-19 was hitting the consciousness of its international attendees. Since then, the WEF had already been forced to change its meeting plans at least six times, scrapping alternative dates and locations from Singapore to the banks of Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne as the pandemic extended.