B-Only 2026 in Annecy: the bitcoin-only conference returns from 7 to 9 November

B-Only 2026, the fourth edition of a French conference devoted to bitcoin and nothing else, runs from Saturday 7 to Monday 9 November 2026 at the Novotel Annecy Centre, next to Annecy station. AlpineChain, an Annecy association that teaches people to use bitcoin, organises it. The classic three-day pass costs €180 until 30 October, after which a pricier late tier takes over, and the official site says tickets can be paid in euros or in bitcoin.

This is a community meeting, not a trade show. Places are kept limited so that people actually talk over meals and in the evenings, Cryptoast wrote in a 10 September article that set it against conferences of several thousand people. The official site says beginners are welcome: some talks are advanced, but general talks, workshops and informal time are planned too.

B-Only 2026 programme: quantum risk, Lightning and AI agents

b-only.org still has no timetable. The only one comes from the event’s listing on Cryptoast, which says sessions are being revealed gradually. When we checked it again on 23 October, nothing had been added since 21 October.

Saturday opens at 14:00. Half an hour later ProfEduStream, an online educator who uses that name, takes beginners’ questions on using bitcoin, and Alexandre Stachtchenko speaks at 15:00.

At 17:30 comes the session most likely to fill the room. ProfEduStream asks whether, faced with the quantum threat, the coins attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto should be frozen. Upside, the event’s media partner, says the format runs from a presentation of the problem to a discussion, a poll and an attempt at consensus, with no conclusion decided in advance.

Sunday starts at 09:00 with sending and receiving bitcoin. According to Upside, ProfEduStream’s introductory sessions also show how to use bitcoin without an internet connection. Pierre Noizat follows at 09:30 with “Energy, money and civilisation”, a talk Upside says travels from Lavoisier to Satoshi. French-speaking communities are on the agenda at 10:00, with ProfEduStream and Copinmalin, and Elodie Lue covers what happens when bitcoin meets mobile money at 10:30.

The afternoon has three slots. Aurore Galves-Orjol talks at 14:00 about memes as the language of the monetary revolution. Elodie Lue returns at 14:30 for payments over Lightning. At 15:30 Renaud Lifchitz presents Reticulum, which Upside describes as a decentralised communication network built to keep working through outages.

Monday has two items so far: Laure Merlin on building a community with Le Cercle du Coin at 09:00, and a session on AI paying in bitcoin at 09:30.

Workshops on wallets, Lightning, security and digital sovereignty run alongside, the organiser’s ticket shop says. Upside adds that participants create or use a wallet, analyse their own transactions, test Lightning and compare ways of securing their coins, in small groups. The Pleb Forum also has reduced capacity, though no seat count is given. The organiser’s own text on bitcoin.fr mentions a workshop on buying bitcoin without KYC checks. Readers new to keeping their own keys can start with our guide to crypto wallets and custody and the definition of self-custody.

Between sessions there is a P2P market, a bar and two community evenings. Upside also lists a separate meeting where organisers of local bitcoin meetups compare how they welcome newcomers, and artists Lady Block Jane, Theorigon and Missatoshi; the organiser adds Benjamin Locatelli.

Announced speakers, not a final list

The ticket shop lists 18 names, plus others still to be announced: Nicolas Cantu, Copinmalin, Darko, Marius Farashi, Florent Gabriel, Aurore Galves, Lionel Jeannerat, Christine Jeanneaux, Frederic Jollien, Renaud Lifchitz, Elodie Lue, Thomas Mang, Laure Merlin, Pierre Noizat, Polto, ProfEduStream, Loic Ruchat-Leuthardt and Alexandre Stachtchenko.

Cryptoast shows 11 speakers. Three of them, Nicolas Cantu, Lionel Jeannerat and a “Marius Off-Chain”, have no slot in its timetable yet, so the line-up can still move.

Upside gives some roles. Noizat founded the French exchange Paymium, Stachtchenko heads strategy at the savings app Bitstack, Lue founded Effet 21 Conseil and Lifchitz is technical director at Sharekey. Paymium and Bitstack also back B-Only, with Le Cercle du Coin; Upside notes that both firms are its own partners as well.

B-Only tickets: €180 until 30 October, day passes from €49

Prices below come from the official site and the organiser’s ticket shop, read on 23 October 2026. The first and third rows also use AlpineChain’s 7 September article on bitcoin.fr. Accommodation and travel are not included in any ticket.

Ticket	Price	On sale	What it includes
Early pass, first 42 buyers	€150	Sold out	Same package as the classic pass
Classic three-day pass	€180	Until 30 October	Meals and the two community evenings
Last three-day pass	Not on the official pages (€210 in the organiser’s September article)	1 to 9 November	Same package
Saturday only	€49	Not stated	No meals
Sunday only	€89	Not stated	Sunday lunch
Monday only	€49	Not stated	No meals
Three-day pass plus Bitcoin Wealth Summit, Bordeaux (20 November)	€214	Until 6 November, 23:59; 30 tickets	B-Only package plus the Bordeaux day

The official site lists the late “Last” pass as “coming soon”, with no price. The three-day pass covers Saturday dinner and Sunday lunch and dinner, according to the shop, while the official site speaks of the lunches and dinners on the programme. Meals are vegetarian; people with other diets are asked to contact the organisers before the event.

Venue, rooms and house rules in Annecy

The Novotel stands at 1 place Marie Curie, a few minutes’ walk from the station. The organiser says Annecy is easy to reach from Lyon, Grenoble, Geneva and French-speaking Switzerland.

Rooms are booked separately. The official site offers 15% off the Novotel’s public rate with the code BEON26, subject to availability. It also lists six rentals from a local concierge firm, YES Conciergerie, in Annecy, Cran-Gevrier and Dingy-Saint-Clair, sleeping two to seven people, with 5% off when booked directly rather than through Airbnb. The organiser’s Discord server helps people find someone to share a room with. Wednesday 11 November is a public holiday in France, two days after the close.

Photographing participants without their consent is banned, phones included; the rule is repeated at the entrance and a volunteer checks it is respected. The official site says all conferences are filmed for later broadcast, with seating areas where people are less likely to appear on screen. Upside says only the talks meant for broadcast are filmed.

Who is behind B-Only: AlpineChain and its Annecy merchants

AlpineChain does more than the conference. It signs up local shops that accept bitcoin, helps them set up payment tools and points bitcoin users to them, a project it calls the Annecy Bitcoin Tour. At the end of August 2026 it counted eight partner businesses in and around Annecy, among them a pizzeria, a sneaker shop and a paragliding company, according to Cryptoast’s September article, written by Marius Off-Chain, who is on Cryptoast’s speaker list. The association also runs meetups and workshops on keeping and spending bitcoin.

The bundle on sale until 6 November links B-Only to another French event, the Bitcoin Wealth Summit in Bordeaux on 20 November.

From a boarding school to a hotel conference centre

No details were found for the first edition. The second, from 9 to 11 November 2024, was held in a boarding school in Annecy with 130 places and about ten talks, according to Cryptoast’s 2024 listing. Tickets cost €210, €250 and €280, with meals and nights on site included; the two higher tiers sold out.

The third edition moved to the Novotel conference centre from 21 to 23 November 2025, and its pass included two nights, the regional site Savoie News reported. Its price was not found.

For 2026 the dates come two weeks earlier, the pass sits below every 2024 tier and it no longer includes a bed. No edition has published an attendance figure.

What is not known yet

The finish time is unclear. The ticket shop gives 13:00 as both the start and the end time of the event, while the Cryptoast timetable opens on Saturday at 14:00 and lists nothing on Monday after the 09:30 session.

The organiser has not said how many tickets are on sale this year, how many seats the Pleb Forum has, what the “Last” pass will cost on its own pages, or which of the announced speakers are confirmed. For the basics behind Saturday’s beginners’ questions, our guide What is Bitcoin? is a starting point.