The accelerator of private markets' wealth revolution, held at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes where private banks, family offices, and GPs meet to build the distribution infrastructure for the next wave of private capital.
IPEM Wealth is the dedicated private wealth vertical of IPEM, held annually at the Palais des Festivals in Cannes and focused entirely on the distribution of private capital strategies through the wealth management channel. Where IPEM Global (September, Paris) serves the institutional LP–GP relationship, IPEM Wealth addresses a different structural question: how private equity, private credit, and infrastructure reach individual investors via private banks, multi-family offices, and wealth platforms. First held as a standalone event in 2025, it runs in Cannes in February as part of the IPEM Cannes franchise, adjacent to but distinct from the broader IPEM winter gathering. The 2026 edition theme is "Riding the Crest of the Wave."
Private markets were, until recently, an exclusively institutional universe. When IPEM launched in 2016, the typical LP was a pension fund, sovereign wealth fund, or insurance group. By the mid-2020s, individual AuM in private markets was projected to grow from $2.7 trillion to $9.3 trillion by 2028, an annual growth rate of roughly 25%. That trajectory cannot be achieved through institutional channels alone: the growth depends on reaching high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals through wealth intermediaries who were not historically built to distribute closed-end funds.
The structural shift has two drivers. The first is regulatory: ELTIF 2.0 (European Long-Term Investment Fund, revised rules effective 2024) lowered minimum ticket sizes and widened the eligible product set, creating a viable on-ramp for European private banks to allocate client capital into private markets at scale. The second is product: evergreen fund structures, now representing an estimated 75% of new wealth-channel inflows, remove the capital call management complexity that made closed-end funds operationally prohibitive for discretionary mandates. Semi-liquid vehicles now allow wealth platforms to integrate private equity and private credit into model portfolios alongside traditional assets.
IPEM Wealth exists because these developments require face-to-face infrastructure: GPs need to identify and qualify distribution partners, private banks need to understand which fund structures are operationally compatible with their platforms, and everyone in the chain needs to work through the unsolved problems together, including performance benchmarking for illiquid assets, regulatory suitability, and liquidity window coordination. Cannes in February, within the established IPEM Cannes franchise, concentrates that conversation at a moment when teams are setting their year's priorities.
The attendee base splits into three functional groups. Allocators form the core: global and regional private banks (Julius Baer, Indosuez Wealth Management, Deutsche Bank Private Bank, Goldman Sachs Private Wealth are among confirmed 2026 participants), multi-family offices with direct investment mandates, local wealth managers, and emerging client-oriented institutions building private market allocations for the first time.
GPs attend with their wealth distribution teams, not their institutional fundraising teams, which means a different room than IPEM Global. Large managers with dedicated wealth products (Ardian, Ares, Carmignac, CVC, Eurazeo, Harbourvest, Neuberger Berman, Partners Group, Pictet, Tikehau Capital) are represented alongside mid-market managers building their wealth channel for the first time. The critical third tier is service providers: technology infrastructure (iCapital, S64 Capital), fund administrators, legal advisers, and reporting platforms that make the operational integration of private markets into wealth platforms possible.
Sessions are practitioner-led and cover every major private asset class through the lens of wealth distribution rather than institutional investment. Recurring themes include: evergreen and semi-liquid fund structures and how to evaluate them for suitability; ELTIF 2.0 implementation across European jurisdictions; building discretionary mandates that incorporate private market allocations; operational integration of subscription and redemption windows into private banking platforms; performance reporting and risk attribution for illiquid assets; distribution partnerships between GPs and private banking networks; and the risks of the retailisation process, including mis-selling exposure, liquidity crunch scenarios, and the limitations of benchmarking tools. The IPEM Wealth Awards, launched in 2025, recognise innovation across the private markets and wealth management intersection.
IPEM Global (September, Palais des Congres, Paris) serves the institutional private markets universe: LP–GP fundraising, secondary transactions, co-investment, and deal-making across the full institutional allocator base. IPEM Wealth (February, Palais des Festivals, Cannes) is dedicated to the wealth management channel: private banks, family offices, wealth platforms, and GPs who distribute through those channels. The events share brand and organiser but serve different commercial relationships. Some GP sponsors appear at both, with different teams attending each. The Cannes timing for IPEM Wealth places it adjacent to the broader IPEM Cannes gathering, though the two are programmatically distinct.
The European Long-Term Investment Fund is a regulatory structure created by the EU to channel capital toward long-term real economy investments. The 2024 revision (ELTIF 2.0) removed the previous 10,000 euro minimum subscription requirement, broadened the eligible asset set, and made ELTIFs usable in discretionary portfolio mandates for the first time. For private markets distribution, this is the primary regulatory vehicle enabling European private banks to offer private equity and infrastructure to retail and semi-institutional clients compliantly. IPEM Wealth programme sessions regularly address ELTIF structuring, jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction implementation timelines, and distribution partnership models built around ELTIF-compliant products.
There is meaningful overlap in the GP sponsor list, but the attending teams differ. At IPEM Global, GPs send their institutional fundraising and IR professionals. At IPEM Wealth, they send their wealth distribution and product heads, who manage relationships with private banks and wealth platforms rather than pension funds and endowments. Some mid-market managers attend IPEM Wealth but not IPEM Global, having built distribution models entirely through the wealth channel. Others attend both with separate team delegations.
Institutional LPs such as pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance groups, and endowments have no operational reason to attend IPEM Wealth, since the entire programme is structured around wealth channel distribution rather than institutional allocation. For those audiences, IPEM Global in September is the relevant event. Similarly, GPs with no current or planned wealth distribution strategy will find little programme content directly applicable to their fundraising model.
IPEM (International Private Equity Market) is the organiser behind both IPEM Wealth and IPEM Global, making it one of the few conference franchises in private capital with dedicated events serving both the institutional and wealth channels. Founded in 2016, IPEM built its reputation through the annual Cannes gathering and later expanded to a September Paris edition as the market grew. The Cannes franchise, which now encompasses both the winter institutional gathering and IPEM Wealth, draws on the Palais des Festivals as a venue with the infrastructure to handle 3,000+ delegate events across multiple concurrent tracks. IPEM also operates a year-round community platform and produces editorial content through its community site.
IPEM Wealth arrived at the right moment structurally: the combination of ELTIF 2.0, evergreen product innovation, and private bank appetite created genuine commercial demand for a dedicated infrastructure event, not just a side stage at IPEM's main Cannes gathering. The 3,400-participant figure for 2026 and the calibre of private banking institutions in the room suggest the event has moved past proof-of-concept. The harder question is whether the forum accelerates genuine distribution or mostly reflects the early-mover marketing budgets of large GPs who already have wealth products. The operational problems, integrating illiquid alternatives into discretionary mandates, managing subscription windows, achieving regulatory suitability at scale, are real and unsolved. IPEM Wealth is useful precisely because those problems require conversation between GPs, banks, and infrastructure providers simultaneously. Whether that conversation produces durable distribution relationships or mostly generates awareness is what the next three years of flows will decide.
Registration for IPEM Wealth 2026 opens through the event website. Pass pricing is not disclosed on the public pages as of verification date; access is granted by delegate profile category (fund manager, allocator, or service provider), with separate registration flows for each. An interest form is available at the official URL. The IPEM Express direct train from Paris to Cannes is referenced by IPEM as a networking opportunity for delegates travelling from the capital.
No. IPEM Global is held in September in Paris (Palais des Congres). IPEM Wealth is held in February in Cannes. The two events share the IPEM brand and organiser but are held in different cities and different months. Within the Cannes calendar, IPEM Wealth runs at the Palais des Festivals as part of the IPEM Cannes franchise, which includes a pre-opening day (3 February 2026) before the two main conference days (4–5 February).
The Palais des Festivals et des Congres, 1 Boulevard de la Croisette, Cannes. This is the same venue associated with the Cannes Film Festival and is IPEM's established Cannes location for its winter events.
Yes. The IPEM Wealth Awards were launched in 2025 to recognise excellence across the private markets and wealth management intersection. The 2026 edition continues the awards programme, with categories covering fund innovation, distribution partnerships, and infrastructure development.
| Official website | https://www.ipem-market.com/ipem-wealth-2026/ |
| Participation page | https://www.ipem-market.com/ipem-wealth-2026/participate/ |
| IPEM Global (September) | https://www.ipem-market.com/ipem-global/ |
| IPEM community | https://community.ipem-market.com/ |
| Register | https://www.ipem-market.com/ipem-wealth-2026/participate/ |