Meridian 2026 in Lisbon: Stellar’s conference on 28-29 October

Meridian 2026, the yearly conference of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), takes place in Lisbon on 28 and 29 October 2026 at the Convento do Beato, a 16th-century former convent in the Marvila district. The organiser bills it as the eighth edition, and this year runs under the line “Made to Move”. DTCC, U.S. Bank, Meta and MoneyGram all have slots on the agenda, next to a session on a sovereign bond issued by the Marshall Islands.

That is a lot of traditional finance for a conference built around one blockchain, Stellar. Most sessions deal with stablecoins, tokenised assets or cross-border payments.

Meridian 2026 Lisbon: dates, venue and side events

Sessions run on Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 October. The official schedule opens the first day with a welcome at 10:00 and ends the second with a closing session from 17:10 to 17:30. A party, “Last Night in Lisbon”, follows at the convent from 20:00 to 23:30.

No time zone is printed next to those hours. Portugal leaves summer time on Sunday 25 October, so we read them as Lisbon time, which equals UTC on both days. Add one hour for Paris or Rome.

Two side events come first. HackMeridian, a hackathon, runs on 25 and 26 October in Lisbon; the organiser does not give its venue. On Tuesday 27 October the Stellar Lounge at the convent opens from 14:00 to 17:00 for badge pick-up, and check-in continues from 8:30 on both conference days. Attendees need an official ID and their QR code.

Programme: banks, bonds and payments on stage

The schedule holds 81 entries across two main stages, Tejo and Douro, plus a room for workshops and roundtables. Day one opens with SDF leadership, chief executive Denelle Dixon among them, on the network’s next ten years. Nadine Chakar, global head of DTCC Digital Assets, then sits down with Dixon. At 12:15 Ginger Baker of Meta gives a keynote, “Connection Through Money”, on stablecoin rails and agentic commerce; at 13:00 Anthony Scaramucci of SkyBridge Capital takes the Tejo stage.

Thursday leans further into institutions. At 10:05 Jamie Walker of U.S. Bank talks to Dixon. According to the session text, the bank completed a live pilot transaction on Stellar that tested minting, redemption, freezing and clawback, and the organiser presents USBDC as one of the first bank-issued stablecoins on a public blockchain. At noon a block of short talks brings in MoneyGram, whose product and technology chief Luke Tuttle is listed, along with Taurus, Cobre, BVNK and Airtm.

The afternoon is the densest part. At 14:35 “A Fireside on Sovereign Bonds Onchain” covers USDM1, described as a dollar sovereign bond of the Marshall Islands backed by US Treasuries and issued natively on Stellar; the country’s ambassador to the United States, Charles Paul, is on stage. At 15:20 Amparo Garcia Flores of Securitize Europe and Michael Shaulov of Fireblocks discuss what institutions want onchain. Ten minutes later, on the Douro stage, an SDF keynote looks at AI agents holding wallets and the x402 and MPP payment protocols.

The last session, “Where We Move Next” with Dixon, promises next steps for Stellar and “a special announcement” whose content has not been disclosed. The winners of the Stellar Shark Tank, where top HackMeridian projects pitch on Wednesday afternoon and the audience votes a People’s Choice award, are named there, along with the i3 Award winners.

The five headliners

The home page names five headliners, and each of them has a slot on the schedule:

• Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital
• Jamie Walker, head of digital assets and money movement at U.S. Bank
• Nadine Chakar, global head of DTCC Digital Assets
• Michael Shaulov, CEO and co-founder of Fireblocks
• Ginger Baker, VP of product management at Meta

A separate speakers page lists 138 names without saying that all are confirmed. We cite the names the schedule places in a session.

Meridian 2026 tickets: early-bird prices and how to pay

The official home page shows three tiers: General Admission at $299, Government and Public Policy at $99 (policymakers, regulators, public sector) and Developer at $49 (engineers, technologists, students). Cryptoast, a French crypto site whose event listing repeats the organiser’s data, labels these early-bird prices. The register page says the early bird ran until 15 August 2026 or until sold out.

That register page shows no current prices and does not say whether tickets are still on sale. Cryptoast gives 9 October 2026 as the registration close, a date the organiser’s own pages do not state. That date has now passed, yet on 19 October neither the home page nor the register page carried a sold-out or closed notice. Check the official site before booking travel.

Payment goes through USDC on the Stellar network, and listed prices include taxes and fees. Tickets are non-refundable, but the organiser can transfer one to another eligible attendee. The government tier needs a promo code, published on the register page. All prices are in US dollars.

Getting to Convento do Beato

The venue is at Alameda do Beato 40, 1950-042 Lisbon, in Marvila, the eastern riverside district along the Tagus. That street address comes from Cryptoast: the organiser names the convent but gives neither an address nor transport advice. Breakfast runs from 8:30 to 10:30 and lunch from 12:00 to 14:00 on both days, and the schedule tells attendees to confirm times in the Meridian app.

None of the official pages mentions a livestream or online ticket. Treat Meridian as an in-person event unless the organiser announces otherwise.

From Madrid to Rio: past Meridian editions

Meridian changes city every year. The 2023 edition, the fifth, took place in Madrid from 26 to 28 September. London hosted the sixth at Church House from 15 to 17 October 2024. We found no attendance figure for either.

Rio de Janeiro followed on 17 and 18 September 2025, at the Copacabana Palace, under the theme “The Blueprint”. For that edition the organiser now gives more than 1,000 attendees from 65 countries, 60-plus sessions and 115-plus speakers. Lisbon is the first Meridian in continental Western Europe since Madrid.

Why Meridian matters for readers in Europe and Africa

European readers will recognise the subjects: they are the ones MiCA now governs at home. Sylvain Prigent of SG-Forge, Société Générale’s digital-asset unit, sits on the “Rules as a Feature” panel on Thursday, and Securitize Europe joins the institutions fireside. Max J. Heinzle, founder of the tokenised-securities platform 21X, is on the speakers list. Our guide to the MiCA regulation explains the EU rules these firms work under.

African teams get their own slots on Wednesday. “The Emerging Market Playbook” panel, at 14:45 on the Douro stage, covers Latin America, Africa and Asia, with Buki Ogunsakin of BBO Solicitors among the speakers. Half an hour later Seevcash, Akuna Wallet and Kredete give short talks, and at 15:45 a Stellar Community Fund pitch round is reserved for Africa: Liquid by Upesa, KasiMoney, FiatSend, Microvault by Shamba Records and Atram. On Thursday, speakers from GiveDirectly and the UNDP sit on a panel titled “When Everything Else Stops Moving”.

Remittances and stablecoin payments run through most of these sessions; our explainer on what stablecoins are covers the basics. On the US side, a “Live Crypto in America” panel at 13:30 on Thursday is billed as taking place five days before the midterm elections, with American stablecoin rules heading towards the GENIUS Act taking effect in January 2027.

What we do not know yet

As of 19 October 2026, several points are open: whether tickets are still on sale and at what price, the content of the closing announcement, the HackMeridian venue and prizes, and whether any session will be streamed. Session times may also shift, and the organiser points attendees to its app for the final timetable.