Annual one-day Paris forum for family businesses, family offices, and the investors and advisors who serve them. Organised by Decideurs Magazine and Groupe Ficade, with HEC Paris Dieter Schwarz Center for Family Business as academic partner.
Family Stories is the annual Paris gathering of entrepreneurial families, family offices, advisors, and investors who work with French and European family-owned businesses. The one-day forum, organised by Decideurs Magazine and Groupe Ficade, runs thematic round tables and plenary sessions on governance, structuring, growth, and succession. The fourth edition took place on 31 March 2026 at Pavillon d'Armenonville, with HEC Paris Dieter Schwarz Center for Family Business as academic partner.
The 2026 edition was held on 31 March 2026 at Pavillon d'Armenonville in Paris. The venue, a late-nineteenth-century pavilion in the Bois de Boulogne, has been the recurring host for the event. The day combines plenary sessions in the main hall with thematic round tables and curated networking moments. The forum runs as a single-day, French-language-led event, with English content where speakers operate outside France.
Family Stories occupies a specific slot in the spring season of European family business gatherings. It is positioned by its organisers as a flagship moment of the French market, distinct from international family office summits that focus on capital introduction. The event runs at a smaller scale than peer-format Paris conferences in private capital, and concentrates on a specifically French audience of operating families and their advisors, with European and academic guests added through the HEC partnership.
The audience profile is documented in the event's editorial positioning and in the recurring partner network.
The four recurring practice areas of the forum are governance, structuring, growth, and succession. Each edition layers a thematic angle on top of these pillars. The 2026 edition focused on the continuity of family firms across generations, with particular attention to NextGen pathways, including the place of family members who choose not to take over the operating business.
Sessions documented for the 2026 edition include the NextGen round table titled "NextGen: entrepreneurship, differently", scheduled in the late-afternoon slot of the programme. The full session list is not published as an archive on the official website beyond the edition announcement.
The format is built around three modalities, all in-person at Pavillon d'Armenonville:
The format favours discussion over expo-style content. There is no exhibition floor, no formal matchmaking app, and the round-table seating supports peer exchange rather than broadcast.
The fourth edition placed NextGen pathways at the centre of the editorial line. The NextGen round table assembled four voices: Cecile de Lisle (HEC Paris Dieter Schwarz Center for Family Business), Edouard de Saint Pierre (Lombard Odier France), Nils Rousselet (AFFO NextGen Club), and Christine Riou (Riou Glass). The discussion covered the framing of NextGen members as entrepreneurs, successors, and re-founders, and the legitimacy of family members who choose paths outside the operating business. The 2026 edition's published positioning describes "the quiet strength of family businesses, their ability to endure over time through transmission, transformation, and reinvention."
Documented speakers for the 2026 edition include:
The full speaker roster for the 2026 edition is not exhaustively documented on the public-facing event website at verification date. Additional speakers are referenced in partner recap content from Decideurs Magazine and HEC Paris.
Groupe Ficade is a French media and event group focused on senior decision-makers in finance, family business, and the legal profession. Decideurs Magazine is the group's flagship editorial brand. Family Stories is part of the Groupe Ficade event portfolio, which also includes the Sommet du Patrimoine et de la Performance and other professional forums for wealth, private capital, and family business audiences. The event is operated commercially by Groupe Ficade, with Decideurs Magazine providing the editorial framing and the speaker network.
The HEC Paris Dieter Schwarz Center for Family Business participates as academic partner. The center conducts applied research on family enterprise governance, succession, and NextGen leadership, and contributes named speakers and research-based content to the event programme. Recap articles from the center document each edition for academic audiences and provide the most reliable post-event synthesis.
The event is built for French and European family-owned businesses, with a centre of gravity around mid-cap to large groups where governance, transmission, and capital structure questions are non-trivial. Smaller family firms attend, particularly through the NextGen route, but the round-table conversations assume a degree of complexity in the underlying business. Family offices are represented in their dual role as principal investors and as advisors to their families.
Family office summits like the Europe Family Office Investment Summit or the World Family Office Forum focus on capital introduction, with structured 1:1 meetings between family office principals and fund managers. Family Stories sits earlier in the value chain. The focus is on governance, succession, and the operating reality of the family firm, with capital allocation treated as one consequence among several, not as the central agenda.
Three profiles are a poor fit. First, fund managers seeking direct LP introductions, since the format does not include structured capital meetings. Second, vendors selling generic enterprise software or services, since the audience attends for peer-level discussion and not for a sourcing event. Third, professionals with no specific exposure to the family-owned segment, since the entire content stack assumes that the family-firm context shapes the questions on the table.
HEC Paris Dieter Schwarz Center for Family Business is the academic partner. The center supplies named speakers, research framing, and post-event editorial coverage. The academic anchor differentiates Family Stories from purely commercial peer events: research content is integrated into the programme rather than offered as a separate track.
Family Stories is the French anchor of the European family-business spring season. The 2026 edition formalised what previous editions had begun to articulate: the future of family firms now runs through NextGen members who may or may not take over the operating business, and the event treats those paths as equally legitimate. The combination of a Groupe Ficade commercial operation, Decideurs Magazine editorial framing, and HEC Paris academic anchor gives the forum a positioning that no purely commercial peer event reaches.
Family Stories is accessed through the official website at family-stories.fr. Registration mechanics, delegate pricing, and any sponsorship tier structure are not publicly disclosed on the website at verification date. Practical questions on attendance and partnership opportunities are routed through Groupe Ficade. The historical pattern of similar Groupe Ficade events suggests a curated invitation logic for family business representatives, with paid access for service providers and sponsors.
Registration is handled through the official website at https://www.family-stories.fr. Prospective attendees with a family business profile may request access; service providers and sponsors are routed through Groupe Ficade for commercial discussion. Specific pricing and access criteria are not published on the public site at verification date.
The 2026 programme was published on the event website ahead of the 31 March 2026 edition. Post-event, the most reliable synthesis is the HEC Paris Dieter Schwarz Center for Family Business recap, which documents at least one round table in full and quotes named speakers verbatim. Decideurs Magazine publishes additional coverage on its own editorial channels.
The working language of the event is French, with English content where speakers operate outside the French market. International attendees with French language capability and a family-business or family-office mandate fit the audience profile. The event is not positioned as a pan-European convening: its centre of gravity remains the French market, with European and academic guests added through the HEC partnership.
Both events sit within the Groupe Ficade portfolio. The Sommet du Patrimoine et de la Performance, scheduled for 8 July 2026, addresses a broader patrimonial and wealth management audience. Family Stories is the more specialised forum within the portfolio, with a sharper focus on operating family businesses and the governance and succession questions specific to family-owned firms.
| Official website | https://www.family-stories.fr |
| About page | https://www.family-stories.fr/a-propos.html |
| Organiser portfolio | https://events.groupeficade.fr/fr/patrimoine/patrimoine/family-stories/family-stories.html |
| Academic partner | https://www.hec.edu/en/institutes-and-centers-expertise/center-family-business |
| 2026 edition recap (HEC) | https://www.hec.edu/en/family-business/news/nextgen-entrepreneurs-successors-and-re-founders-highlights-family-stories-2026 |