An international eye on Swiss news collated by Peter Hulm for NuseReal

May 2026

Ikea slammed for pricing practices by consumer rights groups and forced to change how it displays prices — 1 May 2026 (LINK)

— The store was criticized for prominently showing the 'family price' - which is only available to those who have a membership, while the regular price was more discrete. Many customers complained after the check-out price was far more than they were expecting, sometimes by several hundred francs. Ikea says it's working with authorities to find a solution which complies with the law.

April 2026

Shock neck and neck opinion poll result on immigration — 30 April 2026 (LINK)

— A new Tamedia poll shows 52% currently back the proposal to cap the population at ten million by 2050, with 46 percent opposed - crucially, only 2% say they're undecided. The vote will be on June 14th.

Arts at CERN and Nobel Prize Museum announce the Collide Stockholm international residency award recipient Emilija Škarnulytė of Lithuania and two Honorary Mentions — 28 April 2026 (LINK)

— In autumn 2026, Škarnulytė will spend one month at CERN followed by one month at the Nobel Prize Museum to develop a new artwork with the support of the curatorial teams of both institutions. At CERN, she will begin her project Memory of the Unseen. Her practice is rooted in the exploration of infrastructures that mediate between the visible and the invisible, the human and the post-human, the present and deep time. In dialogue with scientists at CERN, she will engage with event reconstruction, decay signatures, detector sensitivity and the temporal behaviour of experimental data, focusing on what she describes as “thresholds”.

The best of ultra-thin watchmaking at Watches and Wonders 2026 — 26 April 2026 (LINK)

Swiss National Bank faces pressure to divest from Palantir Technologies (PLTR) in view of the company's contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — 24 April 2026 (LINK)

Geneva civil servants march against planned budget cuts — 23 April 2026 (LINK)

The Swiss government has approved a tightening of the screws for systemically important banks. They will have to cover all holdings in foreign subsidiaries. Swiss government wants UBS to increase its capital by $20 billion. Parliament will debate this law from the summer session onwards — 22 April 2026 (LINK)

In a historic first, Anda Filip of Romania has been elected the ninth Secretary General of the Geneva-based Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the first woman to hold the post in the IPU’s 137-year history — 19 April 2026 (LINK)

Watches & Wonders 2026: The winners and losers from from Geneva's biggest watch fair — 19 April 2026 (LINK)

— Four days on the ground in Geneva, hundreds of novelties across the halls, and more space-travel storytelling than a NASA documentary. Who brought it and who didn't.

The 27 best watches from Watches and Wonders 2026 — (LINK)

Janhvi Kapoor, newly appointed face of luxury watchmaker Baume & Mercier, owns Geneva's watch fair dressed in old Hollywood glam — 18 April 2026 (LINK)

Swiss government wants to make it harder for foreigners to buy homes — 17 April 2026 (LINK)

Swiss greenhouse-gas emissions down by 27% since 1990 — 17 April 2026 (LINK)

— The steepest decline has come from buildings, where emissions are down by 47% over the period, largely reflecting the rapid spread of heat pumps. Industry has also cut emissions substantially, to 8.9m tonnes—around a third below 1990 levels. For the first time, Switzerland has included negative emissions in its official inventory, albeit on a tiny scale—just 705 tonnes of CO2. Switzerland appears to be the first country to include negative emissions under the Paris Agreement.

2026 United Nations Chinese Language Day celebrated at Palais des Nations in Geneva — 17 April 2026 (LINK)

— The event drew some 400 participants, notably officials from international organizations and diplomats from over 30 countries such as Georgia, Laos, Mexico, Pakistan, Thailand, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

Five new Patek Philippe releases from Watches and Wonders Geneva that deserve your full attention — 50th Nautilus anniversary or not — 15 April 2026 (LINK) requires signup

Watches and Wonders 2026: T3 watch experts give their predictions on what we'll see at the event: from From Rolex discontinuations to square dials, here's what we want to see — 12 April 2026 (LINK)

Archaeologists recover 1000 Roman objects from Lake Neuchâtel in Switzerland: found at the end of November 2024, the discovery was kept secret to avoid looting — 12 April 2026 (LINK)

Fabienne Lupo, new President of Geneva Tourism Foundation: my priority is to strengthen its appeal as a leading business tourism destination, while further developing leisure tourism, which is still too often underestimated — 10 April 2026 (LINK)

— "Tensions in the Middle East are affecting certain tourist flows, and we are already feeling the impact, but they also present an opportunity: to reposition Geneva as a safe destination, capable of attracting new visitors and hosting more events."

Six major Swiss banks begin pilot project for franc-backed stablecoin — 8 April 2026 (LINK)

US imposes 15% tariff on Swiss pharma products — 2 April 2026 (LINK)

Switzerland considers 'complete termination' of US Patriot order, vows to extend payment freeze — 1 April 2026 (LINK)