The 2020s (pronounced "twenty-twenties"; shortened to "the '20s" also known as "The Twenties") is the current decade that began on January 1, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2029.
 The 2020s began with the COVID-19 pandemic—the first reports of the virus were published on December 31, 2019, though the first cases are said to have appeared nearly a month earlier—which caused a global economic recession as well as continuing financial inflation concerns and a global supply chain crisis.
 Several anti-government demonstrations and revolts occurred in the late 2010s and early 2020s, including a continuation of those in Hong Kong against extradition legislation; protests against certain local, state and national responses to the COVID-19 pandemic; others around the world, particularly in the United States, against racism and police brutality; one in India against agriculture and farming acts; one in Israel against judicial reforms; another in Indonesia against the omnibus law on jobs; ongoing protests and strikes in France against pension reform; an ongoing political crisis in Peru, Armenia, and Thailand; and many in Belarus, Eswatini, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran, China, and Russia against various forms of governmental jurisdiction, corruption and authoritarianism; along with citizen riots in the United States and Brazil in an attempt to overturn election results. The world population grew to over 8 billion people, and in 2023, India overtook China as the most populous country in the world.
 Ongoing military conflicts include the Myanmar civil war, the Ethiopian civil conflict, the Kivu conflict, the Mali War, the Yemeni civil war, the Somali Civil War, the Syrian civil war, the Russo-Ukrainian War, and the 2023 Israel–Hamas war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine became the largest conventional military offensive in Europe since World War II, and resulting in a refugee crisis, disruptions to global trade, and an exacerbation of economic inflation. Smaller conflicts include the insurgency in the Maghreb, the Iraq insurgency, the Philippine drug war, and the Mexican drug war. The year 2021 saw the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, ending twenty years of war in that country, and leading to the republican loyalist uprising against the new emirate government.
 With many extreme weather events magnifying in the early 2020s, several world leaders have called it the "decisive decade" for climate action as ecological crises continue to escalate. In February 2023, a series of powerful earthquakes killed at least 57,000 people in Turkey and Syria; this event fell within the top ten deadliest earthquakes of the 21st century.
 There were significant improvements in the complexity of artificial intelligence, with American companies, universities, and research labs pioneering advances in the field. Other technological advances have also been made, impacting many, such as the use of teleconferencing, online learning, streaming services, e-commerce and food delivery services to compensate for lockdowns ordered by governments around the world during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. 5G networks have launched around the globe at the start of the decade as well, and became prevalent in smartphones. Research into outer space greatly accelerated in the 2020s, with the United States also dominating space exploration, including the James Webb Space Telescope, Ingenuity helicopter, Lunar Gateway, and Artemis program.
 The prominent wars of the decade include:
 Successful revolutions and otherwise major protests of the decade include, but are not limited to:
 Note: To be included, entries must be notable (have a stand-alone article) and described by a consensus of reliable sources as "terrorism". They also must have 100 or more fatalities reported.
 The most prominent terrorist attacks committed against civilian populations during the decade include, but are not limited to:
 Having suffered decline in the years after the Great Recession, the centre-left politics and the 1990s political model (like progressivism, liberalism, social democracy, and third way policies) experienced a resurgence across Europe and the Anglosphere in the early 2020s, with New Statesman suggesting various causes, including natural shifts in the electoral cycle and conservatives' unpopularity among university graduates and voters under the age of 40.
 Sitting leaders that died in office:
 In 2020: Sheik Sabah al-Sabah, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, and Pierre Nkurunziza.
 In 2021: Idriss Déby, John Magufuli, and Jovenel Moïse.
 In 2022: Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Elizabeth II
 In 2023: Nawaf Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah
 Former world leaders who died:
 In 2020: Hosni Mubarak, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, John Turner, Daniel arap Moi, Pranab Mukherjee, Amadou Toumani Touré, Jerry Rawlings, Mamadou Tandja, Tabaré Vázquez, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Pierre Buyoya, John Cremona, Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, Kuniwo Nakamura, Litokwa Tomeing, Moussa Traoré, Pascal Lissouba, Branko Kostić, Lee Teng-hui, Benjamin Mkapa, Miloš Jakeš, Rafael Leonardo Callejas Romero, Abdul Halim Khaddam, Joachim Yhombi-Opango, Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo, Mike Moore, and Janez Stanovnik.
 In 2021: Gustavo Noboa, Ali Mahdi Muhammad, Moudud Ahmed, Didier Ratsiraka, Bonfoh Abass, Mamnoon Hussain, Arturo Armando Molina, Hissène Habré, Jorge Sampaio, Abdelkader Bensalah, Kenneth Kaunda, Anerood Jugnauth, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Enrique Bolaños, Roh Tae-woo, Chun Doo-hwan, Benigno Aquino III, Carlos Menem, F. W. de Klerk, James Fitz-Allen Mitchell, Norodom Ranariddh, Kinza Clodumar, and Karolos Papoulias.
 In 2022: Toshiki Kaifu, Ernest Shonekan, Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta, Christos Sartzetakis, Amos Sawyer, Rupiah Banda, Karl Offmann, Shahabuddin Ahmed,  Ayaz Mutallibov, Dušan Čkrebić, Mwai Kibaki, Leonid Kravchuk, Ciriaco De Mita, Stanislav Shushkevich, Romeo Morri, Bujar Nishani, Evaristo Carvalho, Jacob Nena, Shinzo Abe, José Eduardo dos Santos, Luis Echeverría, Francisco Morales Bermúdez, Fidel V. Ramos, Mikhail Gorbachev, Balakh Sher Mazari, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Jiang Zemin, Adolfas Šleževičius, Edgar Savisaar and Pope Benedict XVI.
 In 2023: Abdelsalam Majali, Constantine II of Greece, Álvaro Colom, Sherif Ismail, Pervez Musharraf, Lubomír Štrougal, Ivan Silayev, Sergey Tereshchenko, Hans Modrow, Ahmed Qurei, Gérard Latortue, Pōhiva Tuʻiʻonetoa, Pascoal Mocumbi, Sir Rabbie Namaliu, Mudar Badran, Nikica Valentić, Rifat Rastoder, Silvio Berlusconi, Sir Lloyd Erskine Sandiford, Sir Tapley Seaton, Milan Milutinović, Arnaldo Forlani, Rachid Sfar, Jean-Jacques Honorat, Surat Huseynov, Henri Konan Bédié, Mircea Snegur, Abdul Ati al-Obeidi, Giorgio Napolitano, Marouf al-Bakhit, László Sólyom, Martti Ahtisaari, Bill Hayden, Li Keqiang, Henri Lopes, Antoni Martí, Rahim Huseynov, Faustin Twagiramungu and Paulin Obame-Nguema.
 Coups d'état against ruling governments during the decade include:
 The event has been condemned by foreign governments, the political opposition, and human rights organizations and is considered the first major political crisis in the country since the conclusion of the Salvadoran Civil War in 1992 and has been referred to as a coup attempt.
 Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include:
 Note: This table is a chronological list of earthquakes reported with 7.5Mw  or greater or that have reported at least 100 fatalities.
 Several southern provinces in the Philippines were inundated and devastated by the typhoon. A total of 410 people died + 80 missing, of which a full 409 died in the Philippines and only 1 died in Vietnam.The damage amounts to up to $720 million.
 Note: This section reports only floods with 200 or more deaths and avalanches and landslides involving 30 or more deaths.
 Beginning in 2019 until 2022, a huge swarm of desert locusts threatened to engulf massive portions of the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
 
 The World Trade Organization reported that trade growth had stagnated and that trade restrictions were increasing as the decade began. The sectors most affected by import restrictions were mineral and fuel oils (17.7%), machinery and mechanical appliances (13%), electrical machinery and parts (11.7%), and precious metals (6%). Regional trade agreements were also found to be increasing.
 2020s
 Medical experts advised, and local authorities often mandated stay-at-home orders to prevent gatherings of any size. Such gatherings could be replaced by teleconferencing, or in some cases with unconventional attempts to maintain social distancing with activities such as a balcony sing-along for a concert, or a "birthday parade" for a birthday party. Replacements for gatherings were seen as significant to mental health during the crisis. Social isolation among alcohol users also adopted a trend towards Kalsarikänni or "pantsdrunking", a Finnish antisocial drinking culture.
 Low-income individuals were more likely to contract the coronavirus and to die from it. In both New York City and Barcelona, low-income neighborhoods were disproportionately hit by coronavirus cases. Hypotheses for why this was the case included that poorer families were more likely to live in crowded housing and work in low-skill jobs, such as supermarkets and elder care, which were deemed essential during the crisis. In the United States, millions of low-income people may lack access to health care due to being uninsured or underinsured. Millions of Americans lost their health insurance after losing their jobs. Many low-income workers in service jobs became unemployed.
 The coronavirus pandemic was followed by a concern for a potential spike in suicides, exacerbated by social isolation due to quarantine and social-distancing guidelines, fear, and unemployment and financial factors. Many countries reported an increase in domestic violence and intimate partner violence attributed to lockdowns amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Financial insecurity, stress, and uncertainty led to increased aggression at home, with abusers able to control large amounts of their victims' daily life. Midlife crisis is a major concern in domestic violence, social implications and suicides for middle-aged adults amid the pandemic. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for a domestic violence and midlife crisis "ceasefire".
 The murder of George Floyd led to civil unrest and protests across the United States and internationally in 2020.
 24.3% of all national parliamentarians were women as of February 2019. 11 women were serving as Head of State and 12 as Head of Government in June 2019. 20.7% of government ministers were women as of January 2019. There are wide regional variations in the average percentages of women parliamentarians. As of February 2019, these were: Nordic countries, 42.5%; Americas, 30.6%; Europe excluding Nordic countries, 27.2; sub-Saharan Africa, 23.9; Asia, 19.8%; Arab States, 19%; and the Pacific, 16.3%. Rwanda has the highest number of women parliamentarians worldwide, 61.3% of seats in the lower house. About 26% of elected local parliamentarians are women.
 Many states swore in their first female leaders during the 2020s including Presidents Katerina Sakellaropoulou (Greece), Samia Suluhu Hassan (Tanzania), Sandra Mason (Barbados), Xiomara Castro (Honduras), Katalin Novák (Hungary), Dina Boluarte (Peru), Nataša Pirc Musar (Slovenia), Prime Ministers Rose Christiane Raponda (Gabon), Victoire Tomegah Dogbé (Togo), Kaja Kallas (Estonia), Fiamē Naomi Mata'afa (Samoa), Robinah Nabbanja (Uganda), Najla Bouden (Tunisia), Magdalena Andersson (Sweden), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), and Chairwoman Borjana Krišto (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
 Development in global goals and issues – including goals or progress related to the largest causes of human death – during the decade, according to reports that systematically track, quantify or review associated progress.
 Wearing a decorative mask to prevent the disease COVID-19 from spreading was a fashion trend in the early 2020s.[further explanation needed] 
 The fashion of the early 2020s was characterized by a variety of styles and influences from different eras. During this period, the trend towards individuality and self-expression in clothing continued. Generation Z has witnessed a notable resurgence of fashion styles from the 1990s and 2000s in the fashion industry. A prominent example of this is the revival of trends such as crop tops, baggy jeans, and elements from the Y2K aesthetic.
 Sustainable fashion practices gained significance, with an increased awareness of environmentally friendly materials and production processes. Influences from social media culture were also unmistakable, as influencers and celebrities exerted a strong influence on fashion trends. The popularity of online platforms like Instagram and TikTok contributed to the rapid spread of trends, while simultaneously allowing niche styles and subcultures to flourish.
 Popular brands in the Anglosphere (Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the  United States) during this era include Adidas, Fila, Nike, New Balance, Globe International, Vans, Hurley, Kappa, Tommy Hilfiger, Asics, Ellesse, Ralph Lauren, Forever 21, Playboy, and The North Face.
 The COVID-19 pandemic heavily impacted film releases especially early in the decade, resulting in a drastic drop in box office revenue as well as many films postponing their release or shifting it to a streaming services. Avatar: The Way of Water is the highest-grossing film of the decade so far, and currently the third-highest-grossing film of all time. Other financially successful films at the box office include Top Gun: Maverick, No Time to Die, Jurassic World Dominion and Oppenheimer. Superhero films mostly continued to do well financially, with Spider-Man: No Way Home being the second-highest-grossing of the decade. Other successful superhero films include The Batman as well as most of Marvel Studios' "Multiverse Saga of the MCU". However, DC Studios' "DC Extended Universe" films began to generally underperform at the box office.
 Nintendo and Mattel made their own big-budget theatrical releases, resulting in the massive successes of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie. These films became the highest grossing movies of 2023 internationally.
 Critically successful films nominated for awards include Nomadland, CODA, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Licorice Pizza and The Fabelmans.
 Animated films such as Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Soul, Encanto, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse have also been highly acclaimed.
 Film reboots regained popularity as many were released on streaming services and in theaters. Some of these film remakes, reboots and returns to older franchises include: Clerks III, Bill & Ted Face the Music, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Top Gun: Maverick, He's All That, A Christmas Story Christmas, Scream, The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Good Burger 2, Wonka, Snow White and Coming 2 America.
 
 The 2020s started off with streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Binge, Max, Showtime, Hulu, and Disney+. Additional streaming services such as Discovery+, Paramount+, and Peacock were released as well. Streaming television such as Pluto TV and YouTube TV also became more popular.
 New and critically acclaimed adult animated shows like Midnight Gospel, Invincible, and Smiling Friends launched in the 2020s, as well as family animated shows such as Amphibia and The Owl House.[citation needed]
 A variety of shows on streaming services such as Squid Game, Never Have I Ever, Tulsa King, Ted Lasso, Extraordinary Attorney Woo, Wednesday, and Tiger King gained popularity. TV show reboots also became increasingly popular, with Frasier, That '90s Show, and Friends: The Reunion appearing on streaming. Many different shows on many different competing streaming services resulted in what has been called the "streaming wars" of the early 2020s. 
 By 2020, TikTok, an online video service, had become extremely popular as a music platform on social media. Users on streaming platforms such as Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music and Apple Music have increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Festivals such as Coachella were cancelled because of the virus. The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the touring business.
 Pop, hip hop, K-pop, R&B, nu disco and synthpop all dominated the early part of the decade, with the most popular artists being Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Lil Nas X, Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, Dua Lipa, Jack Harlow, The Weeknd, Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, BTS, Doja Cat, Olivia Rodrigo, Blackpink, Harry Styles, Bad Bunny, Ed Sheeran, Cardi B, Beyoncé, the Kid Laroi and more.
 An alarming trend that increased in the late 2010s and continued into the early 2020s is the gun violence and murder seen within the hip hop community, with 19 high-profile hip hop artists murdered since the start of the decade (as of April 2023), the most notable being Pop Smoke, Houdini, King Von, Einár, Young Dolph, Drakeo the Ruler, JayDaYoungan, PnB Rock, Takeoff, AKA, and others.
 The ninth generation of consoles began in 2020. The industry remains dominated by Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft with the release of the Xbox Series X/S and the PlayStation 5, while the Nintendo Switch continues to be popular from the previous decade. Technological advancements in consoles included support for real-time ray tracing graphics and output for 4K or even 8K resolution. Physical media continued to be replaced by online distribution of games, with the Xbox Series S and the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition lacking an optical drive. The Steam Deck was released in 2022 as Valve's attempt to bring PC-level gaming to a Nintendo Switch-style handheld format.
 Critically successful games such as Elden Ring, Ghost of Tsushima, God of War Ragnarök, and The Last of Us Part II were released and won multiple best game of the year awards, signaling a shift towards narrative-driven and single-played focused gaming compared with the end of the 2010s where popularity of multiplayer gaming dominated. Nonetheless, widely successful multiplayer games includes Fall Guys, Fortnite, Genshin Impact, It Takes Two, Minecraft, Overwatch 2, Valorant, and Warzone. The detective-party game Among Us surged in popularity in 2020 and became a global sensation, largely attributed in to global stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 Nintendo continued to successfully produce games for the Nintendo Switch, with Animal Crossing: New Horizons selling over 40 million copies, and making it the second-best-selling game on the console. The Nintendo Switch's sales remained strong in the 2020s due in part to games such as  Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Bowser's Fury, Metroid Dread, Nintendo Switch Sports, Kirby and the Forgotten Land, Splatoon 3, Princess Peach: Showtime!, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Pikmin 4, and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. The Nintendo Switch's best-selling game Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has received additional tracks with the "Booster Course Pass", releasing across 2022 and 2023, while Super Smash Bros. Ultimate received a second DLC pass from 2020 to 2021, including characters such as Steve from Minecraft and Sora from Kingdom Hearts. 
 High-budget remakes of video games became much more widespread in the 2020s, with notable examples including Resident Evil 3 and 4, Final Fantasy VII Remake and its sequels, Live A Live, The Last of Us Part I, Dead Space, Super Mario RPG, Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, and Silent Hill 2 being notable examples of older games that received full graphical and modernized remakes.
 Video game film and television adaptations became more financially and critically successful compared with previous decades. Film releases include The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Sonic the Hedgehog, Five Nights at Freddy's and Uncharted; as well as the video game-themed Tetris, Ready Player Two and Free Guy. Television adaptations include Arcane: League of Legends, Carmen Sandiego, Castlevania, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Dota: Dragon's Blood, Dragon Age: Absolution, Sonic Prime, The Last of Us, and The Witcher; in addition with the table-top game adaptation The Legend of Vox Machina.
 There is a revival in expressionist architecture. The SoFi Stadium was completed on 8 September 2020 and is a component of Hollywood Park, a master-planned neighborhood in development in Inglewood, California. The stadium serves as a home to the Los Angeles Rams and the Los Angeles Chargers. SoFi Stadium hosted Super Bowl LVI in February 2022. The stadium is also set to host the opening and closing ceremonies, soccer and archery in the 2028 Summer Olympics, which will be hosted in Los Angeles, California, United States of America.
 The Unity Tower was finally completed on 30 September 2020. The construction of the building originally started in 1975, but stopped permanently in 1981 because of economic constraints and political unrest at the time. Due to the unfinished building's resemblance to a skeleton, it was nicknamed after Skeletor, the arch-villain in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, which was popular in Poland at the time construction began.
 The 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics were postponed to July–August 2021. This was the first Olympic Games to be postponed rather than cancelled in history.
 The 2020 T20 Cricket World Cup, originally scheduled to take place in Australia, was rescheduled to occur in India in 2021. Which was then rescheduled to United Arab Emirates  and Oman.
 Sporting leagues such as the North American National Hockey League Major League Baseball and National Basketball Association, and the English Premier League adapt their seasons and championship play around COVID-19 by placing players in "bubbles" and televising games played in empty arenas and stadiums.
 Food delivery apps such as DoorDash, Instacart, Menulog, Uber Eats, Grubhub and Just Eat Takeaway flourished due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Indoor dining was also closed in many countries due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and upon re-opening the usage of QR codes and other technologies in the restaurant industry increased compared to the 2010s in order to comply with pandemic restrictions.
 Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, online grocery shopping has substantially grown and in the first few months of the pandemic, online grocery shopping increased by 300%. Before the pandemic occurred, food shopping activity accounted for 9% of the market, now 63 percent of consumers worldwide has purchased more groceries online after the outbreak than they did before they were socially isolated.
 Books published throughout the decade include The Vanishing Half, Leave the World Behind, Transcendent Kingdom, I'm Glad My Mom Died, The Glass Hotel, Memorial and The City We Became. Recent releases on this decade include How to Prevent the Next Pandemic by Bill Gates, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall by Alexandra Lange, Wikipedia @ 20 by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. and Jackie Koerner, It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism by Bernie Sanders, and The Candy House.
 Over a year after Friends: The Reunion, Matthew Perry released Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing (which had a foreword written by Lisa Kudrow). The book became a New York Times best-seller.[citation needed][further explanation needed]
 The following articles contain brief timelines which list the most prominent events of the decade:
  Media related to 2020s at Wikimedia Commons