Ripple Swell 2026 in New York (27-29 October): agenda, speakers and price

Ripple Swell 2026 takes place from 27 to 29 October 2026 at The Shed, the arts centre at 545 West 30th Street in Hudson Yards, New York. Ripple, the company behind XRP, hosts it. Its lineup post calls this the 10th-anniversary edition, and for the first time Swell absorbs two other Ripple gatherings: Apex, its summit for developers, institutions and investors building on the XRP Ledger, and UBRI Connect, the academic conference of its university research network.

The home page now promises more than 1,500 attendees, over 80 sessions, more than 100 speakers and three stages. Those are the organiser’s figures, and they have grown. When crypto.news reported on 30 August that Matt Damon would speak, Ripple was expecting more than 75 speakers and more than 50 sessions.

Three days, but only two are open to paying guests

The “three days” need a footnote. Tuesday 27 October belongs to the Platinum Summit, an invite-only meeting for senior people in banking, payments and digital assets, produced with SALT and running from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM New York time. Requests to attend are closed. Its speakers include Raghuram Rajan and Jean-Marc Stenger of SG-Forge, Societe Generale’s digital-asset arm.

Ordinary pass holders can collect badges from 5:00 PM that Tuesday, when the Welcome Reception also opens. The conference proper runs on Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 October, and the event FAQ describes the pass as access “across two days”.

Registration opens at 8:00 AM on 28 October and the main stage starts at 9:35 AM. On the 29th the last session on the agenda starts at 4:45 PM and is listed at 15 minutes, which puts the end of the programme at 5:00 PM (21:00 UTC). Ripple gives no official closing hour.

Ripple Swell 2026 agenda: the sessions to watch

The published agenda spreads the talks over four tracks (Main Stage, Institutional, XRP Ecosystem and Innovation) on three floors of The Shed. Wednesday opens with Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, then Robinhood’s crypto head Johann Kerbrat with Ripple president Monica Long. At 11:10 AM comes the Ripple product presentation, the slot where company news is most likely to land. CME Group chief Terrence Duffy closes the morning.

Wednesday afternoon turns to tokenization, AI agents that move money, a BCG study of the sector and corporate treasury that never closes. David Schwartz, Ripple’s CTO emeritus, talks about what comes next for the XRP Ledger on the ecosystem stage at 4:30 PM. Reece Merrick, Ripple’s managing director for the Middle East and Africa, closes the day at 5:05 PM.

Thursday leans towards markets and rules. Stuart Alderoty, Ripple’s chief legal officer, moderates the opening session on the US midterm elections. BNY’s Laide Majiyagbe sits on a panel about market structure, and Bullish chairman Tom Farley talks with Garlinghouse. At 11:00 AM Matt Damon and Gary White, the co-founders of Water.org, join Garlinghouse for “How Finance Can Solve the Water Crisis”. Ripple says they will cover how Ripple Payments and RLUSD speed up transfers in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Four afternoon sessions on 29 October speak most directly to XRP holders in Europe:

• “Banking and Trading with RLUSD in a Multichain World”, on Ripple’s dollar stablecoin, at 1:00 PM.
• “The Stablecoin Race: Consortiums vs. Individual Issuers”, with TD Securities, Visa and Ripple, at 1:30 PM.
• “Building the Rules for Digital Finance”, moderated by Matthew Osborne, Ripple’s policy director for the UK and Europe, at 2:00 PM.
• “The First 365 Days: Lessons from the First Spot XRP ETF”, with Bitwise president Teddy Fusaro, Franklin Templeton’s David Mann and Canary Capital founder Steven McClurg, at 2:30 PM.

A year on, SoSoValue data for 22 October showed five US spot XRP funds (Bitwise, Franklin Templeton, Canary, 21Shares and Grayscale) holding $1.49 billion in net assets between them, after $1.80 billion of cumulative net inflows. Bitwise’s fund was the largest, at $544 million. Tokenpost counted $1.66 billion on 4 October for almost the same inflows, so the drop since reflects XRP’s price more than withdrawals. Our glossary explains how a crypto ETF works.

Banks, exchanges and XRPL developers on the same bill

The guest list mixes Wall Street with the XRP Ledger crowd. Thursday’s 1:00 PM panel on taking digital assets into bank-grade production brings together Scott Lucas of Barclays, Chris Shin of SBI Savings Bank and Simon Marland of South Africa’s Nedbank, with Michela Rabbia of Intesa Sanpaolo also listed on the agenda row. Speakers from State Street, Grayscale, Visa and Mastercard appear elsewhere in the programme, beside XRPL Foundation engineers.

Developers get their own programme. The XRP Ecosystem stage covers the XRPL Commons roadmap, running a validator and the internals of the Xaman wallet. A Wednesday session asks how to prepare the ledger for a post-quantum future, and the Innovation stage hosts academic papers, among them work on formal verification of the XRP Ledger. The lending amendments behind one hackathon track are still in validator voting: see our report on the XRP Ledger amendment schedule. XRPL Commons runs that 36-hour hackathon in New York on the weekend before Swell.

AI agents come up on both days. On Thursday afternoon, t54 labs talks about agentic finance on the XRPL with RLUSD, and an Amazon Web Services engineer and a Ripple colleague show x402 payment apps for agents that buy and sell services.

Tickets and price

A General Admission pass costs $1,500 on the official registration page, which we checked on 23 October 2026. The page shows no closing date. Earlier tiers ran from $600 (super early bird, to 31 May) to $1,000 and $1,200; the $1,500 “last chance” tier was due to end on 20 October, yet the price was still on sale three days later. Ripple gives prices in dollars only and says nothing about VAT, so we do not give a euro figure.

The pass includes breakfast and lunch on both days, the networking app, replays of selected sessions and invitations to the Welcome Reception and XRP Community Night. It cannot be refunded or transferred. Visitors who need a visa can ask for an invitation letter at [email protected] once registered; Ripple takes up to seven business days. Accredited journalists apply through [email protected].

Getting to The Shed

Ripple’s travel page points to the A, C and E subway lines to 34 St-Hudson Yards, or the 1 train to 28 St. It estimates 45 to 60 minutes from JFK and 30 to 45 minutes from Newark or LaGuardia. Of the three partner hotels it lists, Arlo Midtown and the Courtyard Manhattan/Midtown West were marked sold out on 23 October; the EVEN Hotel Times Square South showed a rate of $369 a night before taxes.

For readers in Paris, Rome or Lagos following from home, New York is five hours behind Paris on 28 and 29 October, so the 9:35 AM opening means 14:35 in Paris. Ripple has not announced a livestream. Its FAQ says most sessions will be recorded and shared after the event.

What Swell 2025 delivered

Swell 2025 took place in New York on 4 and 5 November 2025. On the second day Ripple announced a $500 million investment at a $40 billion valuation, led by Fortress Investment Group and Citadel Securities, according to The Block; Pantera Capital, Galaxy Digital, Brevan Howard and Marshall Wace also took part. Ripple said at the time that its payments network had handled more than $95 billion in total volume and that RLUSD had passed $1 billion in market value.

What is not known yet

Ripple has not announced any news for the event, and its lineup post lists none. The 2026 sponsor list is not published; the sponsors on the home page are labelled as 2025. The Platinum Summit agenda and the final attendance are unknown, and the programme is still moving: the 4:45 PM Wednesday slot is still billed as a conversation with Coinbase Institutional co-CEO Brett Tejpaul, but the agenda now lists another Coinbase Institutional speaker, Shea Karademir. Ripple’s recent launches, such as Ripple Prime’s 24/7 swaps, hint at what the 11:10 AM presentation may revisit. None of it is confirmed, and this page will be updated if Ripple publishes more.