What's harder and more urgent is redesigning how we live, work, care, engage in sports, maintain social connectedness, and live in cities. Because longevity is already reshaping all of them faster than our systems can catch up.
Happy 2026! Every month, we share highlights on how innovations and changemakers are shaping society for New Longevity.
Singapore has extended its part-time re-employment grant through 2027, supporting flexible work for people aged 60+ and assisting thousands of employers. Denmark now counts more than 100,000 people aged 65+ working beyond retirement, driven by smart reforms: pension penalties removed, tax-free senior bonuses introduced, and flexible, reduced-hours work made easier. The economic upside is tangible, with gains projected by the European Commission. In the Netherlands, Ashoka Fellow Femke Groothuis is driving change through the Ex'tax Project, pushing to shift taxes away from labor and toward pollution. With the right incentives, longer lives can mean longer, better working lives.
A recent Wall Street Journal piece challenges the instinct to “do more,” showing why many caregivers burn out and why control is the wrong goal. Drawing on lived experience and data on unpaid care, it reframes well-being around presence, acceptance, and grace. This shows up in practice through Ashoka Fellow Anil Patil through Carers Worldwide, which supports family caregivers across South Asia with community, income pathways, and recognition, and through the National Alliance for Caregiving, which advances research, advocacy, and policy to strengthen caregiver support systems. Read more.
What’s the role of sports in helping us live longer and healthier lives? As explored in the New York Times piece “The Best Sports for Longevity,” activities like tennis stand out not only for their physical intensity but also for what they combine: movement, coordination, strategy, and social interaction, factors linked to significantly longer life expectancy. This insight comes to life in Fit for Life: Dare to Dream film, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, which follows 82-year-old Jack Lowe cycling the French Alps alongside riders aged 50+, showing how sports practiced consistently over decades shape what our bodies can do later in life. Watch now.
Longevity is also about staying connected. In a Wall Street Journal article, “The Retirement Crisis No One Warns You About: Mattering,” Jennifer Breheny Wallace highlights a striking finding: lifestyle planning, not financial preparation, is the strongest predictor of retirement satisfaction. Retirees report their biggest challenges as psychological and social: boredom, loss of structure, and diminished connection, pointing to the need for a deliberate strategy for engagement and belonging. This insight mirrors the work of Ashoka Fellow Elena Parras Durán, whose 55+ Barcelona platform helps people rebuild roles, routines, and contribution after midlife by reconnecting skills, community participation, and purpose, showing that longevity is sustained not just by motion, but by meaning.
As cities confront longer lives, the question is no longer whether to adapt, but how. A recent Forbes article points to three shifts shaping age-ready cities: creative aging that treats arts and culture as core infrastructure; urban design centred on joy, nature, and play; and dignity-first care models like dementia villages inspired by Hogeweyk. These ideas are already taking shape, like in Kochi, India, where Magics Organization is advancing age-inclusive mobility and public space. Building on 8 80 Cities and the World Health Organization Age-Friendly Cities framework, the message is clear: adding years to life isn’t enough. Cities must add life to those years. Read more
“The challenge of longevity is not just how long we live, but how we organize society so that people can continue to learn, contribute, and belong at every age.” — Marc Freedman, Founder & CEO, CoGenerate
Ashoka welcomes four new Fellows to our global community. Christian Ntizimira (Rwanda) is transforming palliative care across Africa by embedding compassion, culture, and community into public health systems. Femke Groothuis (Netherlands) is advancing a just, green economy through tax reform. Maco Yoshioka (Japan) is building scalable postpartum care systems that treat care as a shared social responsibility. Martino Corazza (Italy) is redefining inclusion through Mixed Ability Sports, bringing persons with and without disabilities together.
In a recent op-ed for The Hindu, Ashoka Fellow Arundhati Gupta of Mentor Together, alongside Aditi Jha and Rajeev Gowda, argues that mentoring must be treated as core social infrastructure. As education-to-work pathways fragment, sustained relationships are essential to building confidence, networks, and real opportunity at scale. Read more
In a Brief but Spectacular feature, Ashoka Fellow Beka Ntsanwisi shares how a cancer diagnosis sparked Soccer Grannies, now more than 250 teams strong. What began as a simple act of movement has become a powerful demonstration of how play, connection, and joy sustain health, dignity, and purpose in later life. Watch now.
Open Call: Ashoka is actively seeking exceptional social innovators driving systems change in New Longevity across healthy living, lifelong contribution, caregiving, intergenerational connection, and narrative change. These changemakers are reshaping how we live and age. Do you know someone transforming the future of longevity? Nominate an Ashoka Fellow today!
Event: The Longevity Innovations in Higher Education Summit, hosted by the Age-Friendly University Global Network in collaboration with Arizona State University, CoGenerate, Campus Compact, and NexelCollaborative, will take place March 11–13, 2026, in Tempe, Arizona. The convening will spotlight age-inclusive, intergenerational models reshaping universities across the full life course, at a moment of demographic change and shifting expectations of public value. Register now.
