(Yicai) Oct 12 -- The 2026 Bund Summit, themed ‘Technology, Geopolitics, and the Global Economy,’ will be jointly hosted by the China Finance 40 Forum and Tsinghua University in Shanghai from Oct. 19 to 22.

A series of Track II exchanges involving leading global think tanks will also take place from Oct. 18 to 24. That means the 2026 Bund Summit will anchor a seven-day program of international exchanges.

Yicai Media Group and its affiliated English-language outlet Yicai Global will serve as strategic media partners to provide coverage and reporting for this year’s Bund Summit.

A “Super Observatory”

The Bund Summit serves as a “super observatory” for understanding global macroeconomic and policy trends. This year’s line-up continues that tradition.

Nine former central bank governors, four deputy governors, and seven former finance ministers or deputy finance ministers have confirmed they will speak at the Bund Summit. They will examine central banks' evolving responsibilities, the resilience of macroprudential safeguards, and the outlook for the global monetary system.

The speakers include Jean-Claude Trichet, former president of the European Central Bank and chair of the Bund Summit’s International Advisory Council; Bank of Japan’s ex-Governor Masaaki Shirakawa; Bundesbank’s former President Axel A. Weber; Bank of Israel’s former Governor Jacob A. Frenkel; De Nederlandsche Bank’s ex-Governor Klaas Knot; Bank of Korea’s former Governor Chang Yong Rhee; Banco de Portugal’s ex-Governor Mário Centeno; Federal Reserve’s ex-Vice Chair Donald Kohn; ECB’s chief economist Philip R. Lane; Banque de France’s Deputy Governor Agnès Bénassy-Quéré and Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Deputy Managing Director Edward Robinson.

Robert Rubin, the 70th US Secretary of the Treasury, Portugal’s former Finance Minister Vítor Gaspar, Subhash Chandra Garg, former secretary of India’s Department of Economic Affairs, and others will discuss fiscal options in a high-debt environment and paths to coordinate macroeconomic policies.

This year’s Bund Summit brings together several figures at the center of global monetary-policy debates whose decisions and ideas could influence the future direction of Europe’s economy and beyond. Klaas Knot, former governor of the Dutch central bank, has reportedly secured support as a leading contender to succeed Christine Lagarde as the next president of the ECB. Meanwhile, Bénassy-Quéré and Hélène Rey, economic adviser at the Bank for International Settlements, are both viewed as strong candidates for the next ECB chief economist position.

Institutionalized Dialogues

The 2026 Bund Summit has substantially strengthened and expanded its network of partnerships with international organizations and leading global think tanks, bringing together top-class expertise to advance coordinated governance of the global economy and financial system. This long history of cooperation will translate into intensive exchanges of ideas at this year’s summit.

The program will feature a series of major joint discussions: the Bund Roundtable and closed-door meeting, co-hosted by CF40 and the G30; a joint CF40-International Monetary Fund discussion on ‘The Future of the Asian Economy;’ the CF40-Peterson Institute for International Economics-Bruegel China-United States-Europe Economists Symposium bringing together leading scholars from all three blocks; the CF40-Euro50 closed-door luncheon on changes in the international monetary landscape; and an in-depth discussion on ‘The Evolution of Populism and Its Implications” with European scholars, including Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

This year, PIIE will send its largest and most senior delegation of economists to China since the institute was founded. PIIE and China will jointly hold the 10th CF40-PIIE China-US Economists Symposium.

Addressing the Core Challenges of Global Governance

The gathering of leading figures in global finance and the institutionalized collaboration among top think tanks ultimately aims to help tackle the deeper dilemmas confronting global governance today. The agenda of this year’s Bund Summit is closely attuned to the times.

At the CF40-G30 Bund Roundtable, participants will examine ‘Central Banking in Transition: Mandates, Markets, and Macroprudential Risk.’ A dedicated closed-door session -- ‘Monetary System Beyond the Dollar’ -- will address reserve-currency diversification, the evolution of cross-border settlement, and ways to strengthen the global financial safety net.

With public debt high and fiscal space constrained, the Bund Summit will convene a roundtable on ‘Fiscal Systems Under High Debt in the Age of Technological Revolution.’ It will bring together perspectives from finance ministers in Europe and the US and from multilateral institutions to explore a new fiscal balance between containing debt risks and sustaining long-term productive investment.

Geopolitics is reshaping cross-border supply chains, while trade rules are becoming increasingly fragmented. The CF40-PIIE-Bruegel China-US-Europe Economists Symposium will examine today’s global economy, industrial and trade policies, and financial dependencies.

Sessions including ‘Underestimated Trade Resilience?’ will explore how to preserve the openness and resilience of the multilateral trading system amid ongoing supply chain reconfiguration.

Shanghai’s Development as an Int’l Financial Center

Rooted in Shanghai and born on the Bund, the 2026 Bund Summit will address the key priorities for further elevating the city’s role as an international financial center, including offshore finance, the international use of the Chinese yuan, technology finance, and global asset management.

The Bund Summit will hold a dedicated roundtable -- ‘Shanghai's Path to Building a Global Asset Management Center: Institutional Innovation and Long-Term Value Creation’ -- to explore how institutional opening-up in finance, a broader range of products, and improved cross-border investment mechanisms can attract leading global asset managers to establish a lasting presence in Shanghai, remove barriers to long-term capital and investment, and shape Shanghai as a global asset management center with greater pricing power and asset allocation capacity.

The roundtable ‘The Next Decade of the Yuan’ will build on Shanghai’s role as a global center for the allocation of yuan assets and risk management. It will focus on currency swaps, upgrades to cross-border payment and clearing infrastructure, liquidity provision in offshore yuan markets, and derivatives innovation.

The roundtable ‘Technology Industries and Innovation Capital’ will focus on the concepts of “investing early, investing in smaller firms, taking a long-term view, and backing hard technology” and related challenges.

The Bund Summit will hold a high-level, closed-door meeting -- ‘Chinese Enterprises Going Global: New Dynamics and a New Ecosystem’ -- to focus on companies’ practical needs in cross-border compliance, hedging geopolitical risks, overseas financing and investment, and centralized management of cross-border funds.

Editor: Futura Costaglione