The International Monetary Fund has nudged its forecast for global growth higher for 2026, even as it warned that trade fragmentation and an uneven spread of artificial-intelligence gains are widening the gap between economies that can keep pace and those that cannot.

In its July 2026 update to the World Economic Outlook, the fund projected global output would expand 3.3 percent this year and 3.2 percent in 2027, a slight upward revision from the estimates published in its October 2025 report. The figures reflect an economy that has proven more resilient to successive shocks than many forecasters expected a year ago.

Yet the headline number hides a more complicated picture. The IMF has repeatedly stressed that the benefits of stronger activity are distributed unevenly, with advanced economies and a handful of large emerging markets pulling ahead while smaller, more fragile states struggle with higher borrowing costs and weaker trade links.

Artificial intelligence sits at the center of that divide. The fund has argued that productivity dividends from AI will accrue first to countries and companies with the capital and skills to deploy it, potentially widening income gaps within and between nations. Trade frictions, meanwhile, threaten to splinter supply chains that had grown steadily more integrated over three decades.

Policymakers gathering in Washington for the fund's discussions face a familiar tension: how to safeguard a recovery that is real but narrow. The IMF's message was restrained but unambiguous. Growth has held up. The risk is that it leaves too many behind.

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