As the International Year of Quantum draws to a close, the whole community celebrates a century of advancement.
100th Anniversary of Quantum Mechanics
As 2026 approaches, scientists are preparing for a quantum research milestone. To remember quantum mechanics’ 100th anniversary, UNESCO named 2025 the International Year of Quantum Science & Technology. Quantum computing is now a global ecosystem driven by workforce growth and cooperation, not a lab experiment every year, according to the ITU and IBM.
A Century of Science, a Decade of Access
The 1925 discoveries that influenced our current knowledge of nature were honored with the IYQ. The year also saw a significant milestone for IBM, as the company approached the tenth anniversary of deploying the first quantum processor on the cloud. This decade of open access has turned a specialized field of physics into a global movement with six continents’ worth of academics, developers, and legislators.
In February 2025, more than 1,000 individuals in person and 2,500 online set the quantum technology’s future agenda at the UNESCO offices in Paris. Industry panelists stressed trust, openness, and responsibility as quantum technologies become realistic.
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Creating a Long-Term Quantum Workforce
The pressing need for a “quantum-ready” workforce was one of the main topics of the IYQ. As governments begin to formulate their own national quantum plans, the discussion has shifted from mere involvement to the development of effective, coordinated initiatives. IBM introduced additional advanced courses and an upgraded Qiskit 2.x Developer Certification to meet these demands. To assist businesses and researchers in agreeing on a uniform criterion for “quantum readiness,” these certifications seek to set a clear baseline for software competency.
Education initiatives were not limited to conventional classrooms. Participants from more than 100 nations attended the Voices in Quantum event series, which was organized by IBM and the ITU to explore the relationship between quantum research and policy, business, and civil society. Furthermore, the growth of online resources, such the Qiskit YouTube channel, has made technical explainers to make complex ideas understandable to a wide variety of students.
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Record-Breaking Participation and Practical Action
Perhaps the most obvious indication of the quantum community’s momentum was the size of its public initiatives. The 2025 Qiskit Global Summer School had a 30% increase in participation over the previous year, with over 8,000 registrants from 115 different countries. In a similar vein, the Qiskit Fall Fest double its annual growth by hosting 150 activities for more than 32,000 attendees.
Increasingly, the emphasis of these programs is on “Quantum in Action”—going from theoretical research to real-world prototyping. During the ITU Future Leaders in Quantum (FLIQ) Hackathon, over 400 participants from 30 countries developed solutions to real-world problems using cloud-based quantum technologies. Eventually, the winning teams were highlighted at the AI for Good Summit, demonstrating the increasing collaboration between artificial intelligence and quantum computing in solving breakthroughs of public importance.
Measuring Success and the Road Ahead
New benchmarking tools have been developed as a result of the growing requirement for transparency in the area. One important project that was started at the IYQ was the Quantum Advantage Tracker, which is open-source. In the “final stretch” toward quantum advantage, the moment at which quantum computers can tackle problems that are beyond the capabilities of the most potent classical supercomputers, this joint endeavor enables researchers to test quantum approaches against classical computing techniques.
Additionally, the Unitary Foundation and IBM contributed to an ecosystem study that was aligned with UNESCO. A roadmap of the worldwide potential and challenges confronting the technology will be provided by the study, which is scheduled for full release later in 2026 and is based on a survey of around 600 organizations from academia, business, and government.
It is anticipated that the next ten years will be devoted to the development of large-scale, fault-tolerant quantum computing as well as the incorporation of quantum computers into larger computational operations. The International Year of Quantum has shown that the basis for this advancement is firmly established in a cooperative, international society, even though the technological obstacles are still substantial.
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