2023 Predictions: What’s ahead for this year’s future?

What do deceased prognosticators like Nostradamus and the mystic Baba Vanga to modern-day soothsayers working at CNN and USA Today see in this year’s future? Let’s check out their predictions for 2023 and see if there’s anything they all agree on.

Nostradamus’ Predictions for 2023

In the New York Post, astrologer Reda Wigle reported that Nostradamus included several prophecies for “2K23” in his tome, Les Prophéties, which was published in 1555. Among them were:

• Boiling oceans and dead fish
• “Celestial fire on a royal edifice”
• A great war that leaves people “dead through evil”
• The antichrist’s arrival who “very soon annihilates the three. Twenty-seven years his war will last. The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled. With blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth.”

But was Nostradamus off by a year or two with some of his predictions for 2023? Global warming deniers might argue waters aren’t warming, and Nostradamus specified it would be the Black Sea that saw warming waters that would all but boil its fish, but something like this sort of happened in 2022. It wasn’t fish, though, but billions of crabs that disappeared from the Bering Sea.

Wigle jested that perhaps the bombshell Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Netflix documentary lit up Buckingham Palace with its controversy. And she also pointed out Putin’s war against Ukraine, which has already lasted longer than the seven months war that Nostradamus predicted, has left many people dead through “evil.”

However, The Guardian pointed out that while we’ve been focused on the conflict in Ukraine, Taiwan, North Korea, Iran, and Palestine all have the potential to erupt in violence in 2023 too.

And then there’s the antichrist. Some would argue he’s already here and has made his presence known in the form of one politician or another, but if not, brace yourself. It could get worse in 2023 when he really shows up.

Baba Vanga’s Predictions for 2023

The blind Bulgarian mystic Baba Vanga died in 1996 but she made predictions all the way to 5079, or what she saw would be the end of the world. She’s credited with correctly foreseeing everything from Princess Diana’s death and 9/11 to Barack Obama’s election.

WION reported that her predictions for 2023 include some dark and scary ones, such as:

• A solar storm “on a scale the world has never before seen”
• A “big country” will employ bio-weapons, killing thousands
• There will be a nuclear power plant explosion
• The world might find itself “covered in darkness” in 2023 when aliens pay our planet a visit, which might result in the death of millions
• I thought “lab babies” were already a reality, but apparently not the way Baba Vanga envisioned, which has a much more sci-fi connotation. She foresaw parents being able to create what some might call “designer babies,” where they pick exactly what characteristics they want their child to have.

CNN’s Predictions for 2023

Eighteen contributors took part in CNN’s Crystal Ball feature again this year. Like last year, they’re again sharing their predictions on politics, culture, economy, and sports. However, out of those who participated in 2022, only two correctly predicted much of 2022, Paul Reyes and Alice Stewart. So what do they see for 2023?

Nothing as maleficent as Nostradamus or Baba Vanga. (Thankfully.) Here are their predictions:

• Sports: Stewart sees the Astros heading back to the World Series in 2023 and the Philadelphia Eagles winning the Super Bowl; Reyes (along with most of the other CNN contributors) think a New York team (Yankees or Mets) will win the World Series, and that the Buffalo Bills will win the Super Bowl
• Music: Stewart, as well as most of the other contributors, pick Beyoncé’s “Renaissance” to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
• TV Shows: Stewart also sees Abbot Elementary winning the Emmy for Best Comedy.
• Movies: Stewart picks Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to win the Oscar for Best Picture, while Reyes favors The Fabelmans.
• Nobel Peace Prize: Reyes feels Alexey Navalny should get the prize, while Stewart (along with seven of her colleagues) sees Volodymyr Zelensky getting it.
• Bitcoin: Is it dead, or will it rebound? Stewart feels its peak price in 2023 will top out at $103,000.

USA Today’s Predictions for 2023

Rex Huppke from USA Today jests that while he’s under obligation as a journalist to share his New Year’s predicitions, they’re usually incorrect. Still, he makes them, as he’s done again for 2023. Here’s what he foresees in this year’s future.

• The death of Twitter after it finally crashes and burns under Elon Musk’s leadership. (Perhaps this is the “celestial fire on a royal edifice” that Nostradamus predicted? Not that Twitter was “royalty” per se, but once upon a time it did reign supreme as a favorite social media haunt for many.)
• But Twitter won’t crash entirely. Musk and Kanye West will be the last two active accounts on Earth.
• Donald Trump disappears —at least from American politics. And perhaps America altogether, as he seeks asylum in Russia to dodge all of his legal troubles in the States.
• It will be a Philadelphia Eagles and Buffalo Bills Super Bowl matchup, with the Bills bringing in World Cup soccer star Lionel Messi to kick “the winning goal in overtime.”
• Trump will gift DeSantis a new nickname —”DeSantoad”— when non-Floridians realize what “an unusually verbal and unnecessarily mean toad” he is.
• Ukrainians will see to it that Vladimir Putin gets what’s coming to him.

Check-In

What predictions do you have for 2023? Are any the same as above? Different? Any you hope don’t happen?

I definitely have some I hope don’t come to pass. Like aliens. As much as I think I’d love to know we’re not alone in the universe, I sure don’t want their arrival to “cover the world in darkness” or result in the death of millions.

And the same for war. How are we not more advanced than that by now? It’s shameful with all of our technological progress, some men still feel the need to engage in aggressive destruction like that.