ECB Forum on Central Banking

What is the ECB Forum on Central Banking?

The Sintra Forum was conceived as Europe's answer to the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole Economic Symposium: a forum where the ECB President can convene counterparts from the world's major central banks and the foremost academic researchers in monetary economics. It is explicitly not a conference open to registration; attendance requires a direct invitation from the ECB, and invitations are non-transferable without ECB approval. The event takes place over three days in late June or early July, typically ending with the high-profile policy panel that attracts the widest media coverage.

Each edition is anchored by a research programme commissioned around the year's theme. Academic papers are presented and discussed in plenary and breakout sessions, creating a structured dialogue between the research community and policymakers. This format distinguishes the Forum from press conferences or informal summits: it is a working conference where research findings are stress-tested against the views of the officials who will actually implement policy. The three-day format allows for genuine deliberation rather than a sequence of prepared speeches.

Who attends ECB Forum on Central Banking

The Forum draws a carefully curated group of roughly 180 participants across four categories:

• Central bank officials: the ECB President and Executive Board, governors of European national central banks, and, by invitation, governors or chairs of major non-European central banks (notably the Federal Reserve, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, and others depending on the year's theme).
• Academic economists: research economists from universities and policy institutes whose work is directly relevant to the annual theme; some are commissioned to present papers, others participate as discussants.
• Senior economists from international institutions: representatives from the IMF, BIS, World Bank, and European institutions whose analytical work intersects with central bank mandates.
• Selected media: international and national journalists covering monetary policy receive invitations as participants; others can follow the event from a dedicated media centre near the venue in Sintra.

The mix of sitting central bank governors with academic researchers is the Forum's defining feature: policy questions are tested against the current state of research in real time, in a setting where frank exchange is encouraged by the small, curated audience.

What ECB Forum on Central Banking covers programmatically

The 2026 theme is "Shaping Europe's future: innovation, growth and stability." This framing signals a focus on structural questions about European competitiveness, the interaction between technological innovation and monetary policy transmission, and the longer-term conditions for price stability in a changing European economy. The theme is broader in scope than the 2025 edition ("Adapting to change: macroeconomic shifts and policy responses"), which concentrated on the cyclical and structural dislocations that followed the post-pandemic inflation episode.

Across editions, the Forum consistently returns to a core set of subject areas: inflation dynamics and price-setting behaviour, monetary policy transmission in fragmented or heterogeneous currency areas, financial stability at the intersection of banking and capital markets, the role of expectations in monetary policy, and, increasingly, structural forces such as demographics, trade fragmentation, and the green transition. Each year's research papers are commissioned before the event and published in full on the ECB website after the Forum concludes, creating a publicly accessible archive of frontier monetary economics.

Notable speakers and participants

The 2025 policy panel, held on 1 July 2025, brought together ECB President Christine Lagarde, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda, and Bank of Korea Governor Chang Yong Rhee. This combination of the world's five most-watched central bank leaders in a single moderated discussion is unusual by any standard and accounts for the Forum's exceptional media reach.

The 2026 speaker roster had not been formally announced as of June 2026. Given the Forum's consistent track record since 2014, it is reasonable to expect the ECB President and a similar group of major central bank governors to participate in the policy panel, but no confirmed names should be assumed until the ECB publishes the programme.

Edition history and context

The ECB launched the Forum in 2014, choosing the Penha Longa Resort in Sintra as its permanent venue. The founding rationale was to create a European high-level policy forum with a strong research component, distinct from the more informal gatherings that already existed. Mario Draghi chaired the Forum through 2019, his final edition being the 2019 event in Sintra. Christine Lagarde took over as ECB President in November 2019 and has presided over the Forum since 2021, after the 2020 edition was held in a modified format due to the pandemic. The 2026 edition will be the thirteenth instalment of the Forum, continuing an unbroken annual tradition at the same venue.

The venue: Penha Longa Resort

The Penha Longa Resort is a five-star luxury hotel and spa set within a historic palace on the outskirts of Sintra, roughly 30 kilometres west of Lisbon, in a UNESCO World Heritage cultural site. The ECB has used the resort as its permanent venue since the Forum's first edition in 2014, and the hotel and conference facilities occupy the same estate with a short walk between them. The location is deliberately secluded, reinforcing the private-dialogue character of the event while remaining accessible from Lisbon's international airport.

The organiser: European Central Bank

The European Central Bank was established in 1998 and is the central bank of the eurozone, responsible for monetary policy for the 20 EU member states that use the euro. Its primary mandate is price stability, defined as inflation of 2 percent over the medium term. The ECB is based in Frankfurt, Germany, and operates alongside the national central banks of eurozone members under the European System of Central Banks. Beyond its policy functions, the ECB publishes extensive economic research, maintains a Working Paper Series, and organises academic and policy events including the Forum on Central Banking.

The Forum is managed directly by the ECB's communications and research directorates, with logistical coordination handled in partnership with the Penha Longa Resort. There is no commercial organiser or third-party conference producer involved: the event is an institutional production of the ECB itself.