2026: What Will NGOs Face This Year?

Here’s my crystal ball predictions for NGOs in 2026:

There WILL be NATURAL DISASTERS! There will be earthquakes, floods, hurricanes/typhoons, tornadoes, wildfires, and other disasters. As we always do, NGOs and humanitarians will rush there to help, as best we can.

Ok, if you’ve worked NGOs awhile, you know that this isn’t really a prediction. Science knows that there WILL be natural disasters every year. (Maybe that’s why they’re called ‘natural’. I’ll discuss all disasters in a future post.) These catastrophes are coming in 2026, and that is certain! We can’t predict exact dates, but we know they’ll happen this year.

But even worse, there will be many, many lives lost in this year’s disasters. There will be hard news reports from places and provinces that you’ve never heard of before, where thousands of people will die. Each catastrophe will leave behind massive destruction. These are tragic facts of life on our unstable earth. But, that is part of why us humanitarians do NGO work. We see the destruction from huge disasters on TV news, and we want to go help the survivors.

But some disasters are also man made. Which brings us to my next prediction.

There WILL be a food crisis in 2026. Again, that’s not a fair prediction. There were food crises in 2025, that carried over into the new year. (Gaza and Sudan, plus more.) But I will say that food crises are even more tragic than natural disasters. Oh sure, some food crises are initially caused by crop failures due to drought, or flooding, for example. But in this modern world of globalization, many food crises are man made! It’s a fact that TONS of food can be sent from one corner of our earth to another: by ship, by truck, even cargo planes overnight. But when you have a war or conflict, and it prevents food from reaching refugees and other displaced people, then you have a man made disaster. In some cases, a deliberate starvation of civilians, may be a crime against humanity. The ICC may be indicting more suspects for this crime in 2026.

In the past, human factors that have caused food crises, include reasons such as these: the vindictiveness of some in power, the lack of political will, and funding shortages for aid. These have kept food crises happening every year. Thousands (mostly children) die of hunger each year during these crises, and their deaths are preventable.

Conflicts can cause the worst food crises, as I learned from working on 2 famines (Somalia and South Sudan). There and elsewhere, violence between armed groups quickly lead to restrictions and road blocks, which quickly leads to food shortages and hunger.

That is why ACCESS is so important for NGOs and UN agencies working to stop malnutrition and famines. If humanitarian access was globally guaranteed, we could get food and other aid into the places where its needed the most. We could drastically cut hunger, and stop all food crises in 2026. But tragically, humanitarian access to some parts of this world will continue this year. To save more lives in 2026, we have to do all we can, to push and advocate for more access.

My next crystal ball prediction: funding for humanitarian aid will be insufficient in 2026. (But it will go up in 2027.)

Please don’t roll your eyes. You already know that the Trump administration has cut most foreign aid, including to NGOs. It also reduced the US Agency for International Development to a skeleton of its former capabilities. So US foreign aid in 2026 will continue to be a fraction of what it was before. And the needs in the field this year, will unfortunately be far greater, than what NGOs are able provide.

But hear me out for the second part of that prediction.

Congressional mid-term elections are coming in November in the USA. And already, the odds strongly point to change. It's looking more likely, that the majority of the House of Representatives, will change from Republican to Democrat. That will be good news for the aid and NGO world, because the House controls the budget! Which means that if (when) the Democrats take over the majority next early year, odds look better for more foreign aid funding from January of 2027 onward.

But meanwhile, it's going to be a long 2026…..