Meridian 2026 Lisbon: Dates, Agenda and What to Watch

Meridian 2026 at a glance

What	When	Where
HackMeridian (hackathon)	Sun 25 - Mon 26 Oct	Warehouse ONE16, Lisbon
Stellar Lounge and badge pickup	Tue 27 Oct, 2-5pm	Convento do Beato
Conference day 1, welcome cocktail	Wed 28 Oct	Convento do Beato
Conference day 2, closing party "Last Night in Lisbon"	Thu 29 Oct	Convento do Beato

Convento do Beato is a 16th-century former convent in Lisbon's Marvila district, by the river. Sessions run on two stages named after Portuguese rivers, Tejo and Douro, plus a workshop room called the Stellar Collective. For scale, SDF says the 2025 edition drew more than 1,000 attendees from 65 countries, with 60+ sessions and 115+ speakers.

What Meridian is

Meridian is the Stellar Development Foundation's yearly flagship event, where SDF sets out its plans and companies building on Stellar announce launches and partnerships. It has run every year since 2019, moving city each time: Mexico City, online twice, Rome, Madrid, London, Rio de Janeiro and now Lisbon.

Unlike a general crypto conference, nearly everything on stage relates to one network. That makes it a useful single place to see where Stellar is heading: the 2025 edition was where PayPal's PYUSD went live on Stellar, Ondo launched USDY and Centrifuge brought tokenized funds to the network. See our history of every Meridian.

Speakers confirmed so far

These names appear on the official site or schedule as of 23 October. Line-ups change, so treat this as a snapshot.

Speaker	Organisation	Session
Denelle Dixon and SDF leadership	Stellar Development Foundation	"Made to Move" keynote, day 1, 10:05
Nadine Chakar	DTCC Digital Assets	Fireside, day 1, 10:50
Ginger Baker	Meta	"Connection Through Money", day 1
Anthony Scaramucci	SkyBridge Capital	Fireside, day 1, 13:00
Jamie Walker	U.S. Bank	Fireside, day 2, 10:05
Michael Shaulov, Amparo Garcia Flores	Fireblocks, Securitize	"What Institutions Really Want Onchain", day 2
Arik Galansky	Zama	Fireside on privacy, day 1
Eli Cohen, Sylvain Prigent	Centrifuge, SG-Forge	"Rules as a Feature", day 2

Lightning talks bring in WisdomTree, Archax, Etherfuse, RedSwan, RedStone, Blockdaemon, BNY Investments, EY, MoneyGram, Taurus, Airtm, BVNK, Spiko, Figure Markets, Curve Finance, WalletConnect, OpenZeppelin and Nethermind, among others.

The themes in the agenda

Reading the full schedule, Meridian 2026 has five threads: institutional tokenization, stablecoins and payments in emerging markets, privacy for regulated finance, AI agents that hold wallets, and network performance and security.

• Institutions and tokenized assets. DTCC, U.S. Bank, Securitize, WisdomTree, SG-Forge and Centrifuge all have slots. Context: DTCC said in May 2026 that its tokenization service will connect to Stellar, with DTC-tokenized assets expected on the network in the first half of 2027, and U.S. Bank piloted its USBDC stablecoin on Stellar in September 2026. More in institutions building on Stellar.
• Emerging-market payments. Separate pitch blocks for Latin America and Africa, a panel titled "The Emerging Market Playbook" with Temasek and Valor Capital, and talks from MoneyGram, Airtm, BVNK and Kredete. See how MoneyGram's cash ramps work.
• Privacy. "Privacy for Enterprise" with PwC, OpenZeppelin, Nethermind and Blockdaemon; a Zama fireside; and Cheesecake Labs on compliant private RWA systems.
• AI agents. "When AI Agents Get a Wallet: x402, MPP, and Stellar" and SCF pitches in an AI block. Background: x402 payments on Stellar.
• Network and security. "Producing Faster Blocks at Scale", "Stellar's Road to Quantum Readiness", a talk introducing a security project called Gesserit, Certora on formal verification, and a Blockaid roundtable on securing the ecosystem. For the upgrades already shipped this year, see Stellar protocol upgrades 2025-2026.

Where DeFi shows up

DeFi is present but not the headline. The sessions to mark:

• "Next Gen DeFi: Beyond the EVM" (day 2, 14:30, Douro) with SushiSwap, Curve Finance, Sentora (which runs Stellar DeFi Hub) and SDF.
• SCF pitches: DeFi (day 2, 15:00) with XOXNO, Noether, Alula, Zenex and Liqvid. See XOXNO lending on Stellar.
• SCF pitches: Institutional Use Cases (day 1, 12:40), which includes Soroswap. See Soroswap explained.
• "Issuance to Deployment: How Assets Are Put to Work" (day 1, 12:00) with Ondo Finance: the question of how tokenized funds become usable collateral is the one DeFi on Stellar most needs answered. See RWAs as DeFi collateral.

Our separate post lists the Stellar DeFi protocols to watch, with current TVL.

How to plan your two days

• Investors and institutions: day 1 morning (SDF keynote, DTCC), the day 2 institutional firesides (U.S. Bank, Fireblocks and Securitize) and "What's Missing for Institutional Adoption to Accelerate?".
• Builders: the Douro stage all day 2 (indexer, RPC, soroban-sdk, StellarExpert talks), the smart-wallet workshop and the SCF pitch blocks, which double as a map of who is funded.
• DeFi users: the DeFi pitches and the Next Gen DeFi panel on day 2, plus the HackMeridian finalists' pitch on 28 October at 13:50.
• Policy people: "Rules as a Feature", "Regulated by Design" and the Crypto in America panel on the U.S. midterms.

What to watch for

We have no advance knowledge of announcements; these are the open questions the agenda points at:

• A date for DTCC on Stellar. The May announcement gave the first half of 2027. Any firmer timeline would be news.
• More bank stablecoins. U.S. Bank's USBDC is a pilot. Whether it, or another bank, moves towards wider issuance on Stellar is worth listening for.
• Privacy features. Three sessions on privacy suggest SDF has more to say on confidential transactions for regulated assets.
• DeFi depth. Stellar's DeFi TVL was $236.1M on DefiLlama on 24 October 2026, and Stellar DeFi Hub's incentive period ends in November. Whether the deposits stay is a live question. See the Stellar DeFi TVL analysis.

The week in Lisbon, day by day

• Sun 25 - Mon 26 Oct: HackMeridian at Warehouse ONE16. Submissions close at noon on Monday; the closing ceremony is at 15:30.
• Tue 27 Oct: badge pickup and the Stellar Lounge at Convento do Beato, 2-5pm. A good afternoon for meetings before the crowds.
• Wed 28 Oct: the SDF leadership keynote at 10:05, the DTCC fireside, HackMeridian finalists at 13:50, the Stellar Townhall at 17:10 and the welcome cocktail from 17:30.
• Thu 29 Oct: U.S. Bank and MetaMask firesides in the morning, DeFi pitches and the Next Gen DeFi panel in the afternoon, the closing session at 17:10 and "Last Night in Lisbon" from 20:00.

Practical notes

• Tickets: through meridian.stellar.org/register. A $99 Government and Public Policy ticket is listed for policymakers and regulators.
• Meridian Pay: the organisers describe a smart-wallet experience at the venue that unlocks swag and activities. In 2025 the same idea used a passkey-based wallet with no seed phrase; see passkey smart wallets.
• Getting a wallet ready: if you want to try Stellar apps on site, set one up before you fly. See the best Stellar wallets.