Held at the Penha Longa Resort in Sintra every year since 2014, except for two pandemic-era online editions, the European Central Bank's Forum on Central Banking is an invitation-only three-day symposium where sitting central bank governors debate monetary policy alongside academic economists; the most recent edition ran 29 June to 1 July 2026, and no 2027 dates had been announced as of 3 September 2026.
ECB Forum on Central Banking (Sintra) is the European Central Bank's annual invitation-only symposium, held at the Penha Longa Resort since 2014, where central bank governors debate monetary policy alongside academic economists and senior officials from other institutions. The most recent edition ran 29 June to 1 July 2026 under the theme "Shaping Europe's future: innovation, growth and stability." No 2027 edition has been announced as of 3 September 2026.
The most recently held edition ran 29 June to 1 July 2026 at Penha Longa Resort, Estrada de Sintra, 2714-511 Sintra, Portugal. That edition has concluded: as of 3 September 2026 the ECB has not published dates, a theme or a venue for a 2027 edition. Every edition since 2014 has been held at Penha Longa Resort, with one exception: the 2020 and 2021 editions ran online because of the pandemic. On that pattern a 2027 edition, if it runs, would likely fall in late June or early July, again in Sintra, but this is inference from past practice, not an announced fact.
The European Central Bank, the central bank of the 20 eurozone member states, based in Frankfurt. The Forum is an in-house institutional production of the ECB's own communications and research directorates, not run by a third-party conference producer; there is no separate commercial organiser to contact. General queries about participation go to info@ecbforum.eu; media queries go to media@ecb.europa.eu. The Forum has run every year since 2014, at Penha Longa Resort in Sintra except for 2020 and 2021, held online during the pandemic.
180, an organiser estimate, describing four groups: central bank officials (the ECB President and Executive Board, governors of national central banks, and invited non-European governors), academic economists, senior economists from international institutions such as the IMF, the BIS, the OECD and the World Bank, and a limited number of accredited media. The ECB's own 2026 participants directory names more than 200 individuals, wider than the 180 estimate; the gap is not explained in the sourced material and most plausibly includes ECB staff, support roles and Young Economist Prize finalists who are listed but not counted in the headline figure.
Published roster for the 2026 edition, drawn from the official speakers and papers page, checked 3 September 2026. This roster corrects the database's five-name shortlist (Christine Lagarde, Jerome Powell, Andrew Bailey, Kazuo Ueda, Chang Yong Rhee), which describes the 2025 policy panel, not 2026: Jerome Powell's term as Federal Reserve chair ended in May 2026, succeeded by Kevin Warsh, and the Bank of Korea is represented in 2026 by Hyun Song Shin, not Chang Yong Rhee.
Policy panel, moderated by Sara Eisen, co-anchor, CNBC's Squawk on the Street:
ECB leadership across other sessions:
Session speakers:
Panel: artificial intelligence and financial stability:
Panel: trade and economic resilience:
Conference moderator throughout: Claire Jones, US Economics Editor, Financial Times.
The 2026 edition ran 29 June to 1 July, at the same Penha Longa Resort venue used since 2014. The theme changed from 2025's "Adapting to change: macroeconomic shifts and policy responses" to "Shaping Europe's future: innovation, growth and stability." Two top-table participants changed since 2025: Kevin Warsh became US Federal Reserve chair in May 2026, succeeding Jerome Powell, and Hyun Song Shin now represents the Bank of Korea. A new artificial intelligence and financial stability panel appeared, alongside a dedicated conversation on AI between OpenAI's chief economist and the ECB's Philip R. Lane, neither part of the 2025 programme as previously verified. The policy panel moderator changed to CNBC's Sara Eisen.
Four numbered sessions plus two panels and the policy panel, run over two working days (30 June and 1 July) after an opening address on the evening of 29 June. Session 1: European productivity, innovation versus diffusion. Session 2: bank regulation, financial stability and growth. Session 3: migration's impact on productivity. Session 4: tokenisation in digital money and payments. Panel 1: artificial intelligence and financial stability. Panel 2: Europe's role in global trade. The programme closes with the policy panel and the Young Economist Prize award ceremony. Dates: 29 June to 1 July 2026.
Plenary sessions pairing an academic paper with a discussant, moderated panels, a policy panel of sitting central bank governors, and Young Economist Prize speed presentations followed by a poster session. Not an exhibition-format event: there is no expo floor, no exhibitor booths and no delegate-matching app of the kind commercial conferences run. The full programme is delivered as prepared remarks, discussion and question and answer, not workshops.
No fringe programme distinct from the official three days. The closest things to side events sit inside the main programme itself: the ECB Young Economist Prize speed presentations and poster session on day one, and the award ceremony on day two. The Prize pays EUR 10,000 to the winning PhD candidate; applications for the 2026 round closed 2 March 2026. No separate dinners, receptions or side summits are publicly documented, though a closed programme for invited officials cannot be ruled out.
There is no ticket. Participation is by invitation only, and invited participants pay a EUR 1,500 fee that the ECB describes as a contribution toward the event's costs, not a commercial ticket price. Source: the official Forum FAQ, checked 3 September 2026. No sponsor pass, exhibitor pass or day pass exists, because the Forum runs no exhibition space.
The main programme, including the policy panel, plenary sessions and panels, is curated entirely by the ECB; no open call for speakers is published. The one open channel for early-career researchers is the ECB Young Economist Prize: PhD candidates in economics or finance submit original research, with the 2026 round closing 2 March 2026, and finalists present at the Forum and compete for the EUR 10,000 award. Beyond that route, how an academic or official is selected for the main programme is not publicly documented.
Not applicable. The ECB Forum runs no exhibition space, no sponsorship tiers and no paid partner programme; it is funded and produced entirely by the ECB, an EU institution, not a commercial conference organiser.
None. The ECB Forum on Central Banking carries no sponsors, no exhibition partners and no branded tiers of any kind, which distinguishes it from commercially organised events in the same sector, several of which do carry corporate co-producers or exhibition partners.
Not companies in the usual sense: the room is dominated by central banks and public institutions rather than corporations. Central banks and monetary authorities (the ECB, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Canada, the Bank of Korea, and other national central banks) sit alongside international organisations (the IMF, the OECD, the World Bank, the BIS) and academic institutions (Stockholm School of Economics, University of Amsterdam, University of Zurich, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, among others named on the 2026 speakers page). Private-sector representation is limited to a handful of named individuals: Apollo's chief economist and OpenAI's chief economist both appear as 2026 panellists, and the participants directory lists investment banks and asset managers as a category without naming firms.
Apply through the ECB's press office at media@ecb.europa.eu; invitations to attend as accredited media are limited by space, per the official Forum FAQ. Journalists not on the invitation list can use a dedicated media centre near the Sintra venue, without access to the sessions themselves, or follow the full live stream instead.
Covered as a genuine news event by international financial media in 2026, not a booked-speaker circuit. Bloomberg ran a live blog of the Fed-ECB policy panel; CNBC live-blogged Kevin Warsh's appearance, and its anchor, Sara Eisen, moderated the panel itself; Euronews and Yahoo Finance covered Christine Lagarde's opening remarks on returning to conventional monetary policy tools. The ECB's own published 2026 participants directory names journalists from the Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg and CNBC among attendees, consistent with on-site reporting rather than speaker bookings alone.
High by the standards of this sector. The ECB has no official media partners and does not pay for coverage, so there is no placed-content tier to flag, unlike commercially organised forums that run sponsored media programmes. Bloomberg and CNBC's coverage reads as independent financial journalism: named correspondents live-blogging a public institution's policy panel, not organiser-supplied copy. The main caveat is access, not bias: outlets without ECB media accreditation cover the event from the live stream and official transcripts rather than the room, a structural limit on original reporting, not a credibility problem with what is published.
Vendors, sponsors and marketers looking for a stand, a client list or brand exposure: there is no exhibition space and no sponsorship programme to buy into. Practitioners wanting an open-registration conference: attendance is by ECB invitation only, with no application form for general participation. Economists outside a central bank, an international institution or a research university with a strong monetary economics profile are unlikely to be invited, except through the Young Economist Prize.
Sits earliest in the EMEA economic forum calendar covered by this index: late June or early July, well ahead of the September cluster where Ambrosetti Forum (4 to 6 September, Cernobbio) and Economic Forum Karpacz (8 to 10 September) run days apart. Against those events and against WEF Davos in January, Sintra is the only one confined to central banking: no corporate co-producers, no exhibition floor, no company delegates as such. It is the sector's closest analogue to the Federal Reserve's Jackson Hole Economic Symposium in Wyoming each August, which draws much of the same governor-level audience two months later.
No. Every edition has been held in Sintra since the Forum launched in 2014, always at Penha Longa Resort, with one exception: the 2020 and 2021 editions ran online because of the pandemic, with no physical venue. There is no regional or secondary edition of the ECB Forum elsewhere, unlike some forum brands that run parallel city editions.
English, in every published session, panel and paper. The official FAQ does not state a working language explicitly, but every speaker, moderator and paper on the 2026 programme is in English.
Yes. The entire Forum is broadcast live and free on the ECB's website, and recordings of every session are posted to the ECB website and its YouTube channel after the event ends. No registration is required to watch either the live stream or the archive.
Not publicly disclosed as a formal refund or cancellation clause. The official FAQ describes only a related process: an invitation can be reassigned to another attendee, subject to the ECB's approval by email, and the deadline for registration changes to the 2026 edition was 29 May 2026. Whether the EUR 1,500 participation fee is refundable if an invited participant withdraws is not addressed in the sourced material.
Not publicly disclosed. No accessibility statement appears in the official Forum FAQ or on its public pages.
Penha Longa Resort, Estrada de Sintra, 2714-511 Sintra, Portugal, about 30 to 45 minutes by road from Lisbon Airport, per the official Forum FAQ. The ECB runs shuttle buses on arrival and departure days; a taxi costs roughly EUR 50. On-site parking is available, subject to security screening. The resort sits within a UNESCO World Heritage cultural site on the outskirts of Sintra, roughly 30 kilometres from Lisbon.
Because it is the only fixture in this sector's calendar where sitting governors of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada share a single moderated stage, rather than a scripted keynote each. That combination, not the size of the room, is why Bloomberg and CNBC ran live blogs of the 2026 panel: markets read a shared stage for hints of coordinated or divergent policy, something separate written statements cannot show.
Because it is an organiser estimate that the ECB's own 2026 participants directory does not confirm: the published list names more than 200 individuals, not 180, with no reconciliation offered anywhere in the sourced material. Read 180 as a rounded description of the room's traditional scale, not an audited headcount; the gap most plausibly includes staff and support roles that a simple attendee count would not treat as part of the audience.
Official Forum page: ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/ecbforum/html/index.en.html. 2026 event page: ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/html/20260629_ecb_forum_on_central_banking.en.html. Speakers and papers: ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/ecbforum/html/speakers_and_papers.en.html. Participants directory: ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/ecbforum/html/participants.en.html. FAQ: ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/ecbforum/faq/html/index.en.html. Young Economist Prize: ecb.europa.eu/press/conferences/ecbforum/YE_competition/html/index.en.html. Organiser: European Central Bank, ecb.europa.eu. YouTube: youtube.com/@ecb. X: @ECBForum. Hashtag: #ECBForum.