Swift's Annual Flagship Conference Opens in Miami With AI and Digital Assets at the Centre of a Packed Programme
Swift’s Annual Flagship Conference Opens in Miami With AI and Digital Assets at the Centre of a Packed Programme #
Swift’s Sibos 2026 opened Monday at the Miami Beach Convention Center, the first time the annual conference has been held in Florida. More than 10,000 delegates from over 160 countries attended under the theme “Digital Finance for AI-Driven Economies.”
Graeme Munro, Chair of the Board of Directors at Swift, gave the opening welcome at the plenary session alongside Swift Chief Executive Javier Pérez-Tasso. The two addressed how the cooperative’s agenda has shifted since last year’s Frankfurt edition before introducing the opening keynote speaker.
Jane Fraser, Chair and Chief Executive of Citi, delivered the opening keynote, covering artificial intelligence, tokenisation and digital infrastructure and what they mean for the industry in the near term. Dan Katz, First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, followed with a macroeconomic perspective on conditions in the financial sector.
The four-day programme includes more than 500 speakers across 250-plus sessions in six thematic streams: payments, securities and FX, trade, AI and innovation, ESG, and digital assets. Interoperability across networks, currencies and ledger systems runs through all six, as the industry works out how to connect the fragmented infrastructure being built around tokenised money, on-chain settlement and AI-driven workflows.
Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov is scheduled to keynote on building global digital asset markets, with additional sessions on intelligent money and trust frameworks for interoperable finance. His place on the programme alongside established institutional names shows how quickly blockchain infrastructure providers have moved from peripheral discussions to the main stage at Sibos.
Serena Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion and founder of Serena Ventures, will deliver the closing keynote at the end of the week on leadership and resilience.
Miami was chosen partly because of its trade and financial ties to Latin America and its role as a wealth management hub. Organisers expect attendance to rival the Frankfurt 2025 edition, which set a record. The exhibition floor has more than 200 vendors covering core banking, payments rails, compliance technology and digital asset infrastructure.
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