This Week in Good News

Weekly Hope Index Report — Jul 13–19, 2026

Welcome to Edition #16 of the Weekly Hope Index Report.

This week's Global Hope Index averaged 67/100 — rated “Hopeful.” That's down 2 points from last week.

Across 247 verified positive stories, we tracked optimism in the global news cycle using Brightcast's proprietary scoring system. We flagged 33 high-impact stories (BIS 80+) — verified breakthroughs that move the needle.

Category Highlights

The leading categories this week were 🏥 Health & Wellness (avg BIS 72.6), 🔬 Science & Research (avg BIS 72.5), 🌍 Environment & Climate (avg BIS 70.8).

undefined was the strongest day at 73, driven by a surge in verified positive coverage.

Story of the Week

The week's highest-scoring story was “NASA's Webb Discovers Hidden Planet in Famous Star System - NASA Science” (BIS 90) from NASA.

What This Means

The Hope Index isn't about ignoring hard news — it's about measuring the evidence that things can and do improve. A “Hopeful” reading means a strong week with widespread encouraging updates, above the historical average for verified positive stories.

Hope is cumulative. Every story verified, every breakthrough shared adds to the evidence that the world is moving forward.

The Hope Index is calculated daily using the Brightcast Intelligence Score (BIS), a weighted metric factoring source trust, recency, and community engagement. Learn more about our methodology.