Geopolitics and Trade Policy Expected to Shape the Disputes Landscape in 2026, According to Baker McKenzie Survey

As regulatory pressure intensifies worldwide, issues such as geopolitics, cybersecurity, and tax enforcement are becoming increasingly interconnected with the digital economy.

For companies operating across borders, including those in crypto, blockchain, and emerging technologies, understanding the evolving disputes and investigations landscape is no longer optional.

In this context, leading global law firm Baker McKenzie has released its annual Global Disputes Forecast, highlighting the key risks organizations expect to face in 2026, from cross-border investigations to cybersecurity and tax-related disputes.

Below is Baker McKenzie’s full outlook on how these forces are shaping the year ahead.

Leading global law firm Baker McKenzie has published its annual Global Disputes Forecast, highlighting the challenges of operating in a global environment. Geopolitical pressures are heavily influencing dispute risks, and 82% of organizations are concerned about being subject to a cross-border or multiagency investigation in 2026. In addition, respondents point to cybersecurity and tax as their top dispute and investigation risk areas this year across a diverse, high-stakes risk portfolio.

The Firm’s Forecast, now in its ninth year, is based on a survey of 600 senior in-house lawyers from industry-leading multinationals across several sectors, including industrials, manufacturing and transportation; consumer goods and retail; healthcare and life sciences; technology, media and telecoms; financial institutions; and energy, mining and infrastructure.

Key Findings

The latest Global Disputes Forecast highlights that organizations are entering 2026 feeling disputes from all sides. Alongside technology-related risk and operational and supply chain disruption, geopolitics and trade policy are also central concerns, with 79% of respondents identifying tariffs, sanctions, and export controls as major external market factors increasing their exposure to disputes. This geopolitical reality is driving fears of cross-border and multi-agency investigations, with 82% of organizations worried about being subject to such scrutiny in the coming year. At the same time, threats across cybersecurity, tax, employment, and ESG disputes remain top of mind for legal leaders.

Sunny Mann, Global Chair of Baker McKenzie, said, “We find ourselves in a paradox. Organizations are more globally connected than ever, yet operating in an increasingly fragmented and unpredictable geopolitical environment that is fundamentally altering risk calculations.

The challenge for multinationals is that global integration, once seen as a hedge against risk, has become a vulnerability: supply chains cross contested borders, data flows encounter sovereignty barriers, and business relationships can become compliance liabilities overnight as political alignments shift.

A primary mitigation technique among our clients is one of diversification across supply chains, customer base, fund flows, data storage, and business and investment partners. Overreliance on a single party or market is a vulnerability.”

Addressing such an expansive set of risks necessitates a delicate balancing act as organizations manage competing pressures, often with increasingly limited resources. 38% of respondents say their disputes budget for 2026 is inadequate to meet current risk levels, with funding and resourcing constraints cited as the top barrier to litigation preparedness.

The Forecast also highlights that tax emerged as the second greatest area of concern for both disputes and investigations, likely attributed to the growing complexity of cross-border tax compliance, new international tax frameworks, and increased scrutiny from authorities, which are leading to more frequent and high-stakes tax controversies.

Key Disputes Trends: 2026 Snapshot

According to respondents, the following types of disputes present the greatest risk to their organization in 2026 (ranked by the percentage of respondents identifying the following as their single greatest risk):

• Data privacy/cybersecurity: 18%
• Tax: 12%
• Trade sanctions/export controls: 11%
• ESG: 9%
• Employment: 8%
• Product liability and consumer disputes: 7%
• AI-related (e.g., bias, liability, misuse): 6%
• Antitrust/competition: 6%
• Commercial/contract: 6%
• Intellectual property/patents/trademark: 6%
• Brand/reputation: 6%

In 2026, organizations’ top risks for both disputes and investigations are the same— cybersecurity and tax.

Cybersecurity and data privacy disputes (18%) and investigations (17%) are now an inescapable reality of more digitized processes and operations in the face of an ever increasing and more complex cross-border regulatory matrix and cyber-attacks that grow in sophistication almost daily.

Tax emerged as both the second greatest dispute (12%) and investigations (11%) risk, reflecting the complexity of navigating cross-border tax compliance, transfer pricing scrutiny, and shifting international tax frameworks. For example, notwithstanding the January 5 Side-by-Side Package, which introduced a number of favorable safe harbors, the OECD’s Pillar Two global minimum tax will continue to add a layer of tax complexity worldwide for both US and non-US parented multi-nationals. The rollout of the global minimum tax has added layers of complexity, and jurisdictions around the world are still grappling with how to balance implementing the global tax mandate into domestic law and establishing effective and manageable reporting and compliance mechanisms. Additional concerns include developing the necessary skills to be able to administer and audit a regime that requires familiarity with the nuances of multiple accounting standards and domestic tax systems. Against this backdrop, businesses should prepare for Pillar Two disputes in all material jurisdictions.

Trade sanctions and export controls, ESG, and employment also ranked among the top concerns, emphasizing that, alongside urgent pressures, organizations are addressing a diverse portfolio of risks more broadly.

Technology, geopolitics, and supply chain disruption drive external disputes risk.

The rapid deployment of AI and the increasingly complex cybersecurity threats and data privacy regulations have made data-driven risk the top external driver of dispute exposure in 2026, with 80% of respondents citing it as a concern. Governments are seeking to shore up national security interests, particularly in critical infrastructure sectors such as energy, water, food, technology, health, and financial services. This is prompting the creation of cyber laws that impose new reporting obligations, such as the EU’s NIS2 Directive, the US CIRCIA, and Singapore’s Cybersecurity Act. These laws require critical infrastructure operators to report major cyber incidents within a stipulated time frame to protect national security and essential services.

At the same time, 79% of organizations view geopolitics and trade policy as a threat, as sanctions, tariffs, and export controls disrupt global operations and create uncertainty in cross-border contracts and enforcement. Concerns over geopolitics and trade policy are felt particularly acutely in Germany (84%) and the UK (84%), reflecting the vulnerability of foreign trade-heavy economies.

Operational and supply chain disruption, a concern for 78% of respondents, also continues to test organizational resilience.

Resource constraints expose vulnerabilities in organizations’ risk-readiness

Over one-third, 38%, of organizations report that their 2026 disputes budget is insufficient to meet current risks, which can lead to slower and less effective responses to disputes. Organizations with limited resources struggle to investigate issues thoroughly, engage specialist counsel, or manage multiple cases at once. These constraints reduce flexibility and increase the risk of delayed or reactive decision-making when disputes escalate unexpectedly. Funding and resource constraints (55%) and inability to keep pace with regulatory developments (52%) have also emerged as organizations’ greatest barriers to litigation preparedness. Barriers such as addressing supply chain vulnerabilities (47%) are felt most acutely by sectors with complex and sensitive supply chains, such as industrials, manufacturing, and transportation.

Cross-border investigations pose a significant threat in 2026

A remarkable 82% of respondents fear that they may be subject to a cross-border investigation in 2026, while data preservation/forensics (52%) and cross-border coordination (48%) come out as the top areas organizations say present a challenge for their preparedness for investigations. This underlines a disconnect between the looming reality of cross-border investigation risk and organizations’ ability to overcome it. Concerns over the likelihood of being subject to a cross-border investigation are felt particularly acutely by respondents in Singapore (88%) and Hong Kong (85%). This is likely due to their positions as major regional hubs for cross-border trade, financial flows, and data movement, as well as a surge in whistleblowing activity in the Asia Pacific region.

Modern arbitration requires adapting to complexity.

International arbitration continues to be a cornerstone of cross-border dispute resolution, valued for its flexibility, neutrality, confidentiality, and enforceability across borders. In the medium term, organizations expect the greatest challenges for international arbitration to arise from digital transformation and data security, cost and duration, and geopolitical issues. Adoption and integration of technology and data security, particularly cybersecurity threats and the ethical use of AI, are expected to present challenges in areas such as virtual hearings, digital evidence management, and legal research.

About Baker McKenzie

Baker McKenzie’s 2026 Global Disputes Forecast surveyed 600 senior decision-makers with responsibility for, or with a key role in, disputes and investigations at large organizations (annual revenue greater than USD 500 million). Respondents are based in the US, the UK, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Brazil.

With more than 1,000 battle-tested lawyers specializing in disputes and investigations, who have roots in their home jurisdictions and deep sector knowledge, Baker McKenzie’s Dispute Resolution Practice is one of the largest and most recognized in the world. Consistently top-ranked by leading market surveys, the practice supports multinational clients with their most complex and business-critical challenges across the world, particularly high-stakes multijurisdictional disputes. The Firm’s cases frequently involve novel and precedent-setting issues in countries around the world, including markets where competing law firms do not have a local presence.

This article was originally published as Geopolitics and Trade Policy Expected to Shape the Disputes Landscape in 2026, According to Baker McKenzie Survey on Crypto Breaking News – your trusted source for crypto news, Bitcoin news, and blockchain updates.