Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the capacity of the world to rapidly mobilize resources and political will when faced with an immediate, visible global threat. The accelerated development of effective vaccines inspired the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations to promote the 100 Days Mission (100DM), an initiative to enable deployment of medical countermeasures within 100 days of identifying a pandemic threat. The success of the 100DM in uniting stakeholders highlights the power of framing challenges to inspire collective action. On the other hand, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has had insufficient visibility and urgency to galvanize similar levels of political action. Framing AMR in a way that highlights the urgency, aligns incentives and builds multisectoral coalitions can help overcome some of these barriers. Ultimately, pandemic preparedness and AMR are both collective action problems, requiring sustained political will and systemic change. The AMR community must build systems that are agile and resilient and, by creating a unifying vision for AMR analogous to the 100DM, may promote global commitment to combating this slow-moving but devastating health crisis. This article is part of the Royal Society Science+ meeting issue ‘Vaccines and antimicrobial resistance: from science to policy’.