The international environment has become markedly more challenging in recent years. The liberal order is under pressure from neo imperialist ambitions, rising transactionalism, and a resurgence of neo personalist leadership. The certainties of the post Cold War era, of The End of History, have given way to a more contested world, one that often feels closer to the Hellenic world of Thucydides than Francis Fukuyama’s vision of an age of boring technocracy.

Against this backdrop, soft power is becoming more - not less - important. While the UK Prime Minister’s 2026 Munich Security Conference speech rightly emphasised the need to strengthen hard power, it overlooked a critical reality: alliances, trade, and collective action depend on trust, and trust is the currency of soft power. Even as states increase defence spending, they are also investing in cultural, educational, and diplomatic influence to shape international opinion and secure long term strategic advantage.

This is the context for our new report, Trends in Soft Power 2020–2025, which tracks how the world has shifted and analyses the responses of twenty five leading economies to new geopolitical realities. The research introduces a comprehensive Assets Infrastructure Outcomes (AIO) framework that systematically links national capabilities to international impact - what countries possess, how they deploy it, and what results they achieve.

In just the last 12 months, there have been some dramatic changes in the soft power landscape. The United States has undergone substantial retrenchment, with USAID operations formally ceasing as a standalone agency, Voice of America staff placed on administrative leave, and substantial reductions across public diplomacy programmes. Simultaneously, between 2024 and 2025 China has contracted its Confucius Institute network by 54% (from 990 to 459 locations) following international pressure and host country concerns about academic freedom.

These simultaneous contractions by major soft power actors are reshaping the competitive landscape, creating both challenges and opportunities for other countries. This systematic comparative analysis of soft power draws on available quantitative and qualitative evidence to identify marked shifts in how nations deploy cultural, educational, and diplomatic resources to achieve international influence. 

Key findings

  • Strategic coherence and resource efficiency: Countries achieving superior outcomes demonstrate stronger alignment between strategic objectives, resource allocation, and operational activities. Germany’s integrated approach generates substantial impact through institutional specialisation and clear mandates.
  • Commercial cultural amplification: Republic of Korea’s Korean Wave illustrates how cultural industries can multiply soft‑power effectiveness through market mechanisms, creating synergies between private‑sector success and public‑diplomacy initiatives.
  • Geographic concentration benefits: Resource‑constrained countries achieve better outcomes through regional engagement rather than globally dispersed presence. Australia’s Indo‑Pacific concentration provides one model of strategic prioritisation.
  • Digital platform advantages: Countries effectively integrating digital strategies achieve substantially lower per‑capita costs than those relying primarily on traditional infrastructure, though success depends on sustained content creation and cultural understanding across target markets.
  • Educational network building: Long‑term investment in scholarship programmes and institutional cooperation creates expanding networks of influence as participants advance in their careers whilst maintaining connections to sponsoring countries.
  • Traditional power adaptation challenges: Established actors including the United States and United Kingdom face persistent coordination difficulties rooted in institutional path dependencies. US retrenchment and the UK’s long‑standing challenge of aligning strategic priorities with resource deployment demonstrate how legacy structures can impede adaptation.

Overall, the analysis indicates that nations can navigate an increasingly competitive soft‑power environment through greater strategic coherence and efficiency, while recognising the fluid and rapidly changing nature of the international system. Outcomes, however, reflect multiple interacting factors beyond the measurable variables captured in this study, and causal attribution should therefore be treated with appropriate caution. This conclusion aligns with contemporary academic and policy thinking on the determinants of soft‑power effectiveness.

Citation 

Citation: MacDonald, S., and Murray, A. (2026). Trends in Soft Power 2020-2025. British Council. https://doi.org/10.57884/FS51-KF14

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