In July 2025, on the tenth anniversary of World Youth Skills Day, UNESCO unveiled the new Skills for the Future Platform, a digital ecosystem designed to address the growing challenge of the skills gap among young people globally.

This innovative platform, developed in collaboration with KPMG International, expands on the experience of the Global Skills Academy (GSA) by providing: an initiatives dashboard to showcase real youth training programmes; a data aggregation system to monitor progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 (quality education) and other UN goals contained in the 2030 Agenda; and an engagement framework with tools, guidelines, and metrics to design, evaluate, and communicate the impact of initiatives.

The thematic focus of the Day was "Youth empowerment through AI and digital skills", recognising the centrality of digital technologies and artificial intelligence in shaping the future of work and youth employability.

Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Today, about 450 million young people worldwide lack the skills necessary to successfully enter the labour market. Only one in five in the 15-34 age group follows adequate training paths. Moreover, gender and access disparities remain stark: in some countries, up to 90% of girls lack internet access, and less than 22% of AI professionals are women.

The strategic objectives of the platform are to:

• create an open global space where businesses, civil society organisations, and education stakeholders can share initiatives, deepen collaborations, and improve inclusivity;
• facilitate alignment between investments, training, and labour market needs, promoting more effective and coordinated interventions;
• support progress monitoring, highlight territorial gaps, and promote strategies based on real data and impact analysis.

The platform builds on the established experience of the Global Skills Academy, active since 2020 with over 1.2 million learners in more than 150 countries, including many young women, with free courses on AI, coding, cyber-security, entrepreneurship, and career guidance.

The initiative is part of UNESCO's Strategy for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) 2022-2029, in which the international agency reiterates the need to develop digital, green, and transversal skills to support fair and balanced transitions towards inclusive and sustainable economies.

Finally, the Global Skills Tracker, launched alongside the platform, offers interactive visualisations and in-depth analyses of training needs across various countries, sectors, and professions — a valuable tool for decision-makers, educators, and partners.