So are you ready? Bags packed? Mind in the right place? While this chunky issue of monocle sits proudly on newsstands around the world and drops on the doormats of our loyal subscribers from São Paulo to Sydney, the world will bid farewell to 2013 and head off into 2014 for a fresh adventure. So it’s time to get thinking; to contemplate what lurks just over the horizon. It’s time to be prepared.

Since we launched in 2007 we have always used this December/January issue as a forecast special. True, over the years it has also become the home of our Soft Power Survey, the Monocle 100 and our Travel Top 50, but the crystal ball has never been far away. And this year the forecast theme pops up all over the issue, like an inquisitive seal appearing from the waves of current affairs and the jostling tides of business, culture and design.

In the Affairs pages you’ll get to meet a whole delegation of presidents, prime ministers, foreign ministers and luminaries who turn their attentions to the big topics of the year to come.

Migration is one common thread and the Swedish PM explains why he believes it is the moral thing to take in people looking for a new start (and also imperative if his country wants to continue to prosper). And Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop tells us why her nation’s reputation as unwelcoming to new arrivals is misplaced.

In the Affairs pages we also go to Romania. Again the theme is migration. In 2014 Romanians will be able to travel anywhere in the EU for work and there are fears being stoked that everyone will move west. But monocle found a more nuanced story when we took to the streets of Bucharest. Things may be tough but there’s a young generation determined to fix their country and who have no intention of fleeing.

In our Business pages, senior editor Sophie Grove has had her binoculars focused on several intriguing stories for 2014. She has commissioned a series of reports on factories that are good for the people who work in them (it really is time that we faced up to the hardships that fast fashion and the like force onto the world’s least-protected workers). And there’s also a look at how some emerging economies are finding pleasure, profit and national pride in old skills from mezcal making to batik production.

Our Culture editor Robert Bound meets the gallerists betting on Latin America as the new art makers and market, and a group of surfers who have founded a successful media company that makes the most of the world of print. In Design we talk to the new ceo of Artek in Finland, who says the nation got lazy and people need to raise their game in 2014; and in Edits we tell a happier story about the future of Portugal on the retail front.

We have also marshalled key voices for a series of essays on everything from Japan’s place in the world to US absenteeism on the global stage.

As always monocle believes in being engaged and not retreating from the world. We know there are some difficulties out there but also plenty of opportunities and we hope our forecast issue will leave you informed and intrigued about what lies ahead.