A year is much more than just 365 days, or one orbit of the Earth around the sun. One year produces so many events and human stories that in 2018 alone, the Guardian published more than 73,000 news articles.

Much of what happens is unpredictable. But with 2019 only hours old, there are a few things that can confidently be foretold.

Politics and elections

Brexit may be clear as mud, but if it’s making you queasy then here are a few fixed political points in the year to steady the balance.

It’s a busy year for elections, with four of the world’s most populous democracies holding votes.

Europe holds parliamentary elections from 23-26 May to elect 705 new MEPs. Watch closely to see how well the populist far-right does. It’s been gaining ground across the continent, but will the attentions of Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart and the Trump White house, help or hinder?

How Steve Bannon’s far-right ‘Movement’ stalled in Europe.

Before that, Nigerians head to the polls in February. Sitting president Muhammadu Buhari faces a record 78 opposition candidates, some of whom accuse him of failing to deal adequately with corruption.

Following an illness earlier this year and five months spent recuperating in London, there have also been bizarre suggestions that he has been replaced by a body double. That would certainly make campaigning in the world’s seventh most populous country easier.

Other major democracies going to the polls include India, where Narendra Modi is seeking a second term, and Indonesia, where the one-term incumbent faces a challenge from yet another rightwing populist candidate.

Jair Bolsonaro takes office as president of Brazil at the start of January. Photograph: Marcelo Sayao/EPA

Speaking of rightwing populists, Brazil’s newly elected and controversial president Jair Bolsonaro takes office on 1 January. Other notable votes take place in Thailand (February), South Africa (May), Argentina (October) and Canada (October).

And finally, in Japan, Emperor Akihito will abdicate in April owing to health concerns after heart surgery and treatment for prostate cancer. This will be the first time a Japanese emperor has abdicated in two centuries.

What summits are there to climb?

The last time France hosted the G7 summit of the world’s most industrialised nations in 2011, migration was a fringe issue, Emmanuel Macron was a little-known investment banker and the riots were happening across the channel in the UK.

This time around, President Macron will welcome his peers to Biarritz in August. Priorities are likely to include climate change, the Global Partnership for Education, towards which Macron pledged €500m (£452m) of funding, and migration.

The G7’s larger cousin, the G20, will meet in Japan in June. Founded after the financial crash of 2008, the summit promotes cooperation and a focus on global financial markets. The G20 has been criticised for becoming “a stage for an increasing number of authoritarian and populist leaders who are there to perform for their restive followers back home”. According to the Guardian’s economics editor Phillip Inman, this year’s version will be “increasingly hampered by Donald Trump’s protectionist policies”.

Tarana Burke, founder of the #MeToo campaign, is one of the speakers at the Women Deliver conference. Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP

Another year means another COP – the abbreviation for the annual UN climate summits that warn, with increasing severity, how imperilled we are by our carbon addiction. Alas, this year’s host, Brazil, has pulled out owing to “budget restrictions”. If the summit goes ahead, discussion will surely centre on Trump’s continued disavowal of the Paris agreement, and a review of the 2030 UN Sustainable Development goals, four years on from their implementation.

The Women Deliver conference, which is held once every two years on women’s equality and gender rights, will take place in June in Canada, with Justin Trudeau billed to speak – the first time a sitting leader of a country has done so.

What anniversaries and milestones are coming up?

As 2018 marked the 100th anniversary of the first world war armistice, so 2019 will see the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles, the formal end of the conflict. It is also the 70th anniversary of the founding of Nato, the collective defence pact originally set up to “keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down”.

The internet is poised to pass a notable milestone meanwhile, with predictions that the number of global users will pass the 50% mark in 2019. In the US, for the first time ever the population will have more people older than age 60 than younger than age 18.

Leonardo da Vinci. Photograph: Getty Images

In births and deaths, 2019 is the 500th anniversary of the death of original renaissance man Leonardo Da Vinci and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria. It also marks the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook reaching New Zealand, and the 20th anniversary of the creation of the euro.

What’s happening in science?

This year will mark the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing. No human has been back since 1972. Perhaps a moment to rekindle interest in our cosmological outrider.

The year will also see the first private spacecraft from SpaceX and Boeing take crews to the International Space Station. There will also be the first images of a black hole from the Event Horizon telescope, and the first results from the ESA’s Trace Gas Orbiter probe, which is circling Mars to work out if methane plumes are due to life on the planet.

Back on Earth, the landmark agreement to redefine the kilogram will come into place in May. Rather than being tied to a lump of metal stored in a Parisian vault, the new definition will be a reflection of Planck’s constant, a number rooted in the quantum world. The weight is over.

Space X’s Starship rocket, previously named the BFR, should begin test flights in late 2019. Photograph: HO/AFP/Getty Images

2019 could see the first birth in the UK of a baby with DNA from three parents. The process of mitochondrial transfer was legalised in Britain in 2015 and Professor Alison Murdoch has since been pioneering the technique in Newcastle, with the first woman selected to take part in the process this year.

John Vary, a futurologist at John Lewis’s Innovation Labs, notes some broader, science fiction-style developments which may also intrigue us in 2019.

“In 2019, we could reach a point where customers can share their DNA with shops so that retailers can tailor products to a customer’s genetics or ancestry,” he predicts. “Waitrose & Partners is piloting DnaNudge, an app which will use shoppers’ DNA to help them make healthier choices while food shopping. Another example is OME Health, which offers health plans built on a person’s gut microbiome, genetics blood markers and other health data.”

Will there be a global recession?

Despite 2019 being the Chinese year of the pig – a symbol that denotes wealth – in the western world there may be an economic downturn ahead. According to economics editor Phillip Inman: “A recession looms in the UK, Europe and the US. It is possible once the impact of slowing growth in China and rising interest rates are put together, since most of the momentum after the financial crash of 2008 was based on cheap borrowing and the rapid expansion of Chinese trade. Without these two essential elements, the major economies are heading for trouble. Most doomsayer analysts consider 2020 a more likely year for a slump, with the seeds sown in 2019 by poor policy making.”

The World Bank is predicting a global slowdown in 2019, as the stimulative impact of Donald Trump’s tax cuts wane in the US and China is forced to restrict borrowing by state and private businesses.

The effects of Donald Trump’s tax cuts are receding in the US. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

Central banks are also poised to tighten monetary policies. “The US Federal Reserve is due to increase interest rates at least twice in 2019,” Inman says. “It is also expected to further unwind its quantitative easing policy. An increase in the cost of borrowing is already hitting the US housing market which is reaching levels of distress last seen in the run up to the 2008 financial crash.”

The World Trade Organisation could be unableto judge trade disputes between countries in 2019. When he took office, Donald Trump blocked the appointment of judges to the WTO to replace retirees, leaving a large number of vacancies. The WTO needs a minimum number of legal experts to judge cases and could be inquorate as early as spring 2019.

What should I buy in 2019?

There will be no shortage of new technological releases in 2019. Samsung is due to launch follow-ups to its critically acclaimed Galaxy S and Note series, while Apple will be announcing a new iPhone in September, and Google the Pixel 4 phone in October.

Amazon will be announcing new products in September, likely to be iterations of its home management Echo devices, and Apple will unveil new Macs and tablets in October. In terms of tech developments, the Guardian’s assistant technology editor Samuel Gibbs predicts that the biggest advance will come in the form of flexible screens in 2019.

Voice-enabled products such as the Google Home Hub are likely to transform shopping. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP

Futurologist John Vary adds that the voice search enabled by products such as Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa will develop to “enable people to find items however they describe them and in any language”. While augmented reality could enhance personalised shopping to mean “smart home tech could act as your own shopper, alerting retailers in advance when you’re looking for a product,” he says.

What can I (binge) watch?

With Channel 4 moving to new headquarters in Leeds in 2019, the Guardian’s TV editor, Lanre Bakare, picks the fourth season of comedy Catastrophe and Brexit: The Uncivil War, as ones to watch on the channel next year. Catastrophe tells the story of a couple raising a child conceived in a one night stand. The two-hour Brexit drama meanwhile stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Leave campaigner Dominic Cummings, and is based on first-hand accounts of the campaigns leading up to Britain’s referendum on leaving the EU in 2016.

Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney are poised to return in Channel 4’s Catastrophe. Photograph: Mark Johnson/Channel 4

Further recommendations include big-budget sequels – the final season of fantasy thriller Game of Thrones, airing on Sky Atlantic in April. There’s also the third season of the brooding American noir True Detective in January. Moonlight Oscar winner Mahershala Ali takes the lead from season two’s Colin Farrell and Rachel McAdams. Finally, everyone’s favourite local Norwich radio presenter returns to the BBC with a satirical take on a live talk show in February on This Time … With Alan Partridge.

On the big screen there is a volley of new releases to look out for. With 2018 being a record-breaking year for box office takings, major studios will be hoping to replicate their success with a slate of blockbusters: a live-action Lion King in July, Captain Marvel in May – the franchise’s first female-led film – Toy Story 4 in June, Terminator 6 and Frozen 2 in November, and the final instalment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Star Wars IX, in December.

Mahershala Ali in True Detective series three. Photograph: Warrick Page/HBO

The Guardian’s film editor Catherine Shoard’s picks include King’s Speech director Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats, starring Idris Elba, Taylor Swift, Judi Dench and Ian McKellen. There is also the Downton Abbey movie; Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, starring Godfathers Al Pacino and Robert De Niro; Get Out director Jordan Peele’s latest horror, Us; an adaptation of Donna Tartt’s novel The Goldfinch starring Nicole Kidman; and Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women, starring 2018’s newcomer Timothée Chalamet.

Valued at more than $93bn, the games industry almost doubles the revenue of the international film industry, and the Guardian’s games editor Keza MacDonald has some selections for 2019. Keza picks out Harry Potter Go, made by the creators of Pokémon Go, as “another potential world-conquering mobile game”, she says, this time based on the Harry Potter universe. There is also Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice – a horror samurai game from the director of Dark Souls, “one of the best games of the decade”, according to MacDonald; and The Last of Us Part 2, an “intense, cinematic game about a survivor of a world-decimating outbreak – far from the usual boring zombie story”.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Photograph: Activision/FromSoftware

Further reading

Adele by Leila Slimani (February)

One of the runaway bestsellers of 2016 was Slimani’s Lullaby, a chilling tale of a homicidal immigrant nanny, and Slimani hopes to continue this success with a new novel telling the story of a sex-addicted Parisian journalist.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (February)

Marlon James releases the follow-up to his Man Booker Prize-winning 2015 novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. With Black Leopard, James creates an imaginary ancient world built on African mythology to tell the story of a hunter tracking a lost child. It is the first in a new trilogy, Dark Star.

The Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen (March)

Israeli author Gundar-Goshen pens her third novel on a teenage girl who accuses an older minor celebrity of sexual assault. A fictionalised tale building on the #MeToo movement of 2017-18.

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami (March)

Pulitzer prize finalist Lalami writes a novel charting the American immigrant experience through the eyes of a Moroccan family living in California. It is already earning praise from the likes of JM Coetzee.

Clear Bright Future by Paul Mason (April)

Journalist Paul Mason follows up on 2016’s Postcapitalism, which formulated a collapse of capitalism as we know it, with a theorisation of what makes us human and how we are still capable of changing the future.

The Heartland by Nathan Filer (April)

Former mental health nurse Nathan Filer publishes his second book, a collection of first-person encounters and essays on the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia.