2022: a year of jubilees and leadership contests

How closely did you follow the news in 2021?Take our quiz.

Hello and welcome to a new year.

I will start 2022 by looking a little further than usual and outlining the events that will happen over the next 12 months. Think of it as a forward-looking planner diary for the year ahead.

If there is one overarching topic – apart from the further development of Covid – it will be national leadership. We will be aware of the dignity and vulnerability of our presidents, prime ministers and other heads of state in 2022.

Perhaps most notable, at least for the time she has been in office, is the milestone the Queen will soon reach. In February, if health permits, she will have ruled for 70 years, the longest of all British monarchs. A number of anniversary celebrations are slated for the coming months, which organizers hope will lift the Covid-muffled mood of many Britons, including a competition to create new cities. Could it even contribute to the country’s economic recovery?

On the other side of the channel, Emmanuel Macron will try to maintain his own term until the French presidential election, which begins in April. Since France has just taken over the rotating EU Council Presidency, Macron will be able to use a pan-European stage to present its authority to its home audience.

US President Joe Biden has to worry about his party’s retention of power in Washington because of the upcoming midterm elections in November. It now looks like an opportunity for Republicans to end control of Democrats in one or both houses of Congress.

It will be an important year for China’s leadership, too, but for different reasons. In October, apart from some major excitement, President Xi Jinping will be on the 20th

Hopefully you find this guide useful over the next 12 months – as always, you can email me your views at jonathan.moules@ft.com. Week Ahead will return to its normal structure next Sunday. I wish you a happy new year and look forward to returning on January 9th with the usual weekly guide.

Important economic, corporate and world events

January

• Switch to above Johnson & Johnson. Joaquin Duato becomes CEO, succeeding Alex Gorsky, who becomes Chairman of the Board of Directors

• Preliminary deadline for the European Commission to take a decision to investigate the proposed acquisition of Kustomer Facebook

• The World Bank publishes the winter edition of its Global Economic Prospects Report, a semi-annual forecast focusing on the world’s emerging and developing regions

• Australia, last cricket test match of the Ashes series between Australia and England in Hobart and the tennis tournament of the Australian Open in Melbourne

• Annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. The annual meeting of world leaders takes place online in Davos, Switzerland

February

• UK, Ofgem will announce an update to its energy price cap

• First flight planned for the Nasa X-57, a small, electrically powered test aircraft

• 55th meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, postponed to September 2021

• Great Britain celebrates the Queen her platinum anniversary and celebrates 70 years as a monarch

• USA, Joe Biden’s total budget for 2023 is released

march

• Annual publication of the World Trade Organization trade statistics

• Belgium, meeting of NATO foreign ministers

• China, annual session of the National People’s Congress for China’s Supreme Legislature

• Mali, runoff for presidential and parliamentary elections

April

• France, presidential elections begin

• G20 finance ministers and central bank governors meet

• SpaceX Crew 4 mission launches on a Falcon 9 rocket to fly astronauts to the International Space Station

• IMF World Economic Outlook published

Can

• Colombia, presidential election

• Italy, Eurovision Song Contest in Turin

• Philippines, general election

• Great Britain, local elections in England, Wales and Scotland and deadline for general elections in Northern Ireland. Also, May Day is shifting to June to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee

• OECD Economic Outlook Report

June

• France, presidential elections concluded

• UK, Glastonbury Festival will return after being canceled in 2020 and 2021

• United Kingdom, Winners of Official City Status Contest Announced. Among the 39 applicants are the capital cities of the Falkland Islands, Cayman Islands and Gibraltar.

July

• France, Cannes Film Festival

• Equal Opportunities Summit of the UN Foundation

August

• NASA’s Pre-Aerosol Clouds and Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission is about to begin

• Great Britain, 75th Edinburgh Fringe Festival

• 25th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car accident in Paris

September

• UK, The Bank of England is withdrawing legal tender status from £ 20 and £ 50 notes after replacing them with polymer notes in recent years

• UN general debate opened

October

• China, the Chinese Communist Party, begins its five-year National Congress

• Annual meeting of the IMF and the World Bank

November

December