MERGE Madrid 2026 recap: banks and regulators at the Bolsa, stablecoins and tokenization at Cibeles

MERGE Madrid 2026 ended on Thursday after three days and two venues, and the clearest record of what was on stage so far comes from the organisers themselves. MERGE is a conference where banks, regulators and crypto companies meet to talk about digital assets, and this edition ran an Institutional Summit at the Bolsa de Madrid on Oct 27, then two days of talks at Palacio de Cibeles on Oct 28 and 29 ↗1. In its wrap-up post MERGE put the total at more than 3,000 people and 200+ speakers across the MERGE Stage and the Madrid Stage ↗10.

The Tuesday summit at the Bolsa was the smaller part of the week. The agenda limited it to about 400 speakers and business ticket holders, with roundtables and panels from 15:00 to 18:00 and a VIP cocktail dinner afterwards ↗1. MERGE co-founder and CEO Paula Pascual opened the afternoon, and MERGE's own posts describe the room as regulators, bankers and digital asset firms ↗2↗3. BitGo, Cecabank, Crypto Finance and Rain sponsored it and led the tracks ↗21.

The summit video in the StreamETH archive lists who spoke. It names people from Banco Santander, BBVA, Deutsche Börse, Western Union, Openbank, Unicaja, ABANCA, Anchorage Digital, BitGo and Optimism, among others 1. Its description says the panels covered blockchain as a new corridor for cross-border finance, how financial institutions are answering growing demand for digital assets, the future of digital dollars, and the infrastructure needed to tokenize, settle and move money onchain 1.

MERGE's wrap post for the afternoon adds two details. One panel asked what it would take for digital dollars to be as easy to use as cash, and the last session looked at how crypto assets are changing the banking sector ↗4. The next morning MERGE summed up the summit as banks, market infrastructures and digital asset firms at one table on tokenization, stablecoins, settlement and money onchain ↗5.

The main conference at Cibeles on Wednesday and Thursday used two stages. The MERGE Stage carried the main panels, and the Madrid Stage, backed by the Comunidad de Madrid and the Ayuntamiento de Madrid, hosted business deep dives and practical sessions ↗6↗1. MERGE's posts from Wednesday say the panels there centred on stablecoins, tokenization and the future of finance ↗6. On Thursday morning it said the same subjects carried over into the first panels of day two ↗8.

One Thursday session is named in full. AWIC Spain and MERGE ran a panel called Building Trust at Scale: Regulation, Technology, and Digital Asset Adoption, moderated by Sol Cinosi of AWIC, with Pamela Clegg of Inca Digital, Agata Slater of Hashgraph and Tiburcio Sanz of Taxbit ↗7. MERGE said the topic was what it takes for institutions and users to trust digital assets at scale ↗7.

Outside the panels, the agenda listed an expo and experience area, a startup track on both mornings and a VIP lunch hosted by Optimism on Wednesday ↗1. MERGE closed the event on Thursday and named its next edition: Buenos Aires, March 8 to 10 ↗9. Its Friday wrap-up said 2027 will bring editions in both Buenos Aires and Madrid ↗10.

StreamETH's MERGE Madrid coverage page holds two 2026 videos so far: the 76-second summit video and the official aftermovie, published on Oct 30 12↗11. Neither carries spoken content to quote: the summit video's automatic transcript is music only, and the aftermovie has no transcript yet 12. Full talks from the Bolsa and Cibeles stages aren't in the archive yet, so this recap can't say who argued what on stage ↗11. When those recordings and their transcripts arrive, the panels on digital dollars, bank strategy and tokenized settlement are the ones to check first 1↗4.