Why Now: The European Commission's Strategic Foresight and its Meaning for Sport
The European Commission is placing strategic foresight at the heart of its policy cycle, systematically scanning trends and emerging risks, preparing for different future scenarios, and strengthening institutional resilience. This approach is clearly outlined on the Commission’s official Strategic Foresight page and is supported by its annual reports.
The 2025 Strategic Foresight Report, titled ‘Resilience 2.0’, proposes a proactive perspective that scans not only for threats but also for opportunities on the EU's horizon stretching to 2040. The text, published on EUR-Lex, emphasises that foresight, along with early warning and situational awareness, must be embedded into institutional capacity.
4 Practical Implications for the Sport Sector
Horizon Scanning and Signal Detection: Stress-testing sport policies against 'future pressures' in areas like AI & data, health & accessibility, climate & infrastructure, and demography & participation. The Commission's approach is to get an early look at trends and risks and then integrate them into policy.
Capacity Building: Systematically embedding in-house foresight skills. Structures like the JRC's Competence Centre on Foresight provide inspiration for an 'anticipatory culture' within organisations.
Piloting and Implementation: Running mini-pilots that test, measure, and iterate on foresight findings in the field—a bridge from 'foresight to action'. This aligns with the proactive, opportunity-oriented focus of the 2025 report.
Dissemination and Transparency: Sharing lessons learned through an open-source approach, and aligning policy and sector stakeholders around the same data and foresight set. This mirrors the Commission’s annual report and information architecture.
How We Contribute at Sport Singularity
Think – Strategic Foresight for Sport (SF4S): We perform megatrend scanning for the sport ecosystem, create scenarios, conduct policy stress tests, and develop 'preparedness' roadmaps.
Learn – Sportera: We offer 60–90 minute micro-modules for decision-makers and technical teams on methodologies and toolkits.
Act – Project Hub: We transform foresight findings into pilots, capacity-building programmes, and project designs.
Amplify – Voice of Sport: We disseminate our outputs in accessible formats, including documents, short videos, and data visualisations.
Resources and Further Reading
European Commission – Strategic Foresight general page.
2025 Strategic Foresight Report – the 'Resilience 2.0' framework.
