EthCC + The Agora

EthCC has always been the Ethereum community's home conference — 6,500+ accredited builders at Palais des Festivals. What changes in 2026 is The Agora: Kaiko's inaugural institutional-only forum running alongside EthCC with speakers from Standard Chartered, DTCC, Bloomberg, BNP Paribas, and Euroclear. For the first time, the conference that attracts Ethereum's best protocol engineers also has a dedicated room for the TradFi executives trying to build on their infrastructure.

The Agora is non-sponsored and curated — no booth logos, no marketing panels. Expect serious sessions on market structure, post-trade settlement, perpetual futures regulation, and tokenization plumbing. The main EthCC tracks remain deeply technical. The real value is the collision: grab coffee between an Agora session on Euroclear's DLT strategy and an EthCC talk on account abstraction. Side events during EthCC Week are where most partnerships actually form — block your calendar for the full week.

Cannes in early April is pleasant and walkable. The Croisette hotels fill up fast once EthCC dates drop — book early. Full Pass + Agora access runs ~€1,300, which is a bargain for the dual-track access. Stani Kulechov (Aave) keynotes.