Special Edition - Framing 2026

The Balance team is preparing a special edition to open and frame 2026 — a collection of stories, ideas, and sharp insights on where digital power is heading, and how we might rethink it.

As 2025 closes, we’re witnessing shifts that will define the year ahead. AI is moving from assistance to action. Connectivity is becoming invisible and ever-present. Privacy continues to erode. XR and wearables blur online and offline life. Tech’s climate footprint is growing. And the corporate engine behind all of this is accelerating.

These forces of digital power shape how we live, work, and imagine. For some, the horizon looks exhilarating; for others, deeply unsettling. Most of us sit somewhere in between — navigating a landscape that is fast-moving, uneven, and full of contradictions worth writing about.

At Balance, we want to stay engaged with these shifts by exploring, questioning, and reimagining what digital power can be.

We’re inviting journalists, writers, researchers, and storytellers to pitch thoughtful pieces on how technology will shape our lives and our planet in 2026. We’re looking for articles and essays (approximately 750 to 1,500 words) that examine where tech is taking us — and how people, communities, and movements are pushing back, reshaping, or reinventing digital power.

Whether your angle is political, cultural, economic, environmental, speculative, or anchored in lived experience, we’d love to hear from you.

We welcome your pitch: https://forms.gle/DQi7XUkYth22oJCL9

Deadline for pitch submissions: 1st December