Singapore FinTech Festival: Digital Euro and Stablecoins in the Spotlight

From November 18 to 20, 2026, the Singapore FinTech Festival, organized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the GFTN network, brings together central bankers, regulators, and digital asset players at Singapore EXPO. Piero Cipollone, who leads the digital euro at the European Central Bank, and the chairman of the supervisory board of Qivalis, the euro stablecoin of European banks, are among the speakers. Cointribune details what the program offers for crypto, what interests a European reader, and the cost of the pass.

To benefit from the Singapore FinTech Festival x Cointribune partnership discount (20% with code SMP-DISC-20-COINTRIBUNE), click here.

What is the Singapore FinTech Festival?

It is one of the largest global digital finance events, organized by the central bank of Singapore itself. The 2025 edition, the tenth, gathered more than 70,000 participants from 142 countries and territories and over 900 speakers, according to the report published by the organizers. MAS had announced trials of tokenized bonds settled in central bank money, as we reported in our article on Singapore’s tokenized bonds.

The 2026 edition is organized by MAS and the Global Finance & Technology Network (GFTN), together with the Association of Banks in Singapore, according to their press release of August 26, 2026. The festival is like a car show where you’d also meet the traffic code authors: companies and regulators exhibit side by side. Seen as an operation, it serves Singapore to position itself as a hub for digital finance; for the visitor, it costs a pass and a trip but gives access to central bankers rarely gathered in one place.

What place does crypto have in the program?

The 2026 theme, “The Coming Rewiring of the Financial System“, is divided into five sub-themes. Several directly relate to digital assets, according to the official themes page: the “tokenization chain”, corporate treasurers choosing their settlement asset among “deposits in dollars, local currencies, or stablecoins“, and the rules on digital assets beginning to apply on early markets.

Tokenization consists of representing an asset, such as a bond or a fund share, as a token on a blockchain. To understand this mechanism, read our explanation of tokenization. The head of GFTN already summarized the challenge at the previous edition:

The coming decade will be dedicated to responsibly harnessing AI, developing tokenization securely, and preparing for a quantum future.

Sopnendu Mohanty, Group CEO of GFTN, press release of November 9, 2025 (Cointribune translation)

Speaker	Role	Connection to Crypto
Piero Cipollone	Member of the ECB Executive Board	Chairs the Eurosystem working group on the digital euro
Alexandra Hachmeister	Managing Director Digital Euro, Bundesbank	Preparation of the digital euro
Sir Howard Davies	Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Qivalis	Euro stablecoin of 37 European banks
Steven Maijoor	Executive Board Member, responsible for supervision, DNB (Dutch central bank)	DNB is processing Qivalis’s authorization application
Angela Ang	Asia-Pacific Director, BitGo	Digital asset custody
Aaron Seabrook	Operations Director, Marketnode	Tokenized markets infrastructure

The detailed session program is published over the weeks. The crypto sessions of previous editions, with Circle or Coinbase, were not yet confirmed for 2026 as of September 30.

What does this change for a European reader?

The festival offers a showcase for the European debate on digital currency. On the public side, the ECB is preparing the digital euro, a central bank digital currency; on the private side, 37 European banks, including BNP Paribas, BPCE, and Crédit Mutuel, are preparing with Qivalis a euro stablecoin, pending approval from DNB, according to the Qivalis website. The chairman of Qivalis’s supervisory board and a regulator examining its file will be on the same panel.

The ECB does not see the two projects as incompatible. On April 1, 2026, Piero Cipollone stated that “private settlement assets will play a role“, including “stablecoins denominated in euro issued in Europe“, according to the text of his speech (Cointribune translation). For a saver, the difference remains clear: the digital euro would be issued by the ECB, a stablecoin by a private company, whose solidity depends on its reserves.

How much does the pass cost?

Prices are shown in Singapore dollars (SGD). The discounted rate for the Delegate pass, at 1,000 SGD, ended on September 30, like a hotel reservation price rising as the date approaches.

Pass	Access	Price	With the code -20% (Cointribune calculation)
Delegate	Stages, SFF MeetUp meetings, exhibition, broadcast, After Hours party	1,500 SGD	1,200 SGD
Startup (companies less than 5 years old)	Delegate access for young companies	650 SGD	520 SGD
MeetUp Pass	Business meetings	380 SGD	304 SGD
Livestream	Online only	250 SGD	200 SGD
Executive	Delegate, plus Insights2040 forum, executive lounge, and dinner on November 17	6,000 SGD	4,800 SGD

Group rates exist starting from three passes, and free passes are reserved for regulators, academics, accredited press, and professional exhibition visitors. Passes are non-refundable and non-transferable, according to the festival FAQ.

The festival opens on Wednesday, November 18 at Singapore EXPO. Two things to watch: what the ECB will say about the digital euro, whose legislative framework was still in the hands of European lawmakers in spring, and possible MAS announcements on stablecoins and tokenization, as in 2025 with its tokenized bonds. To position Singapore against its neighbors, reread our analysis of the race for stablecoins in Asia.

Singapore FinTech Festival, from November 18 to 20, 2026: 20% discount with code SMP-DISC-20-COINTRIBUNE on the official registration page, non-refundable passes, according to the organizer’s conditions. Book my pass for the Singapore FinTech Festival.