The twenty-sixth Assises
From October 7 to 10, the Grimaldi Forum hosts the 26th edition of Les Assises de la Cybersécurité, the gathering of France's cybersecurity leadership. A quarter of a century after the first edition, the convention has become part of how Monaco presents itself: a small state that treats digital defence as statecraft.
On October 7, 2026, the Grimaldi Forum opens its doors to the 26th edition of Les Assises de la Cybersécurité, four days of meetings, case studies, and closed-door conversation between the cybersecurity chiefs of major French organisations and the companies that sell them protection. A quarter of a century after the first edition, the principality is still hosting France's most consequential cybersecurity gathering, and this year's edition arrives at a moment when the subject has never been more central to how states think about themselves.
The format has barely changed because it works. Les Assises pairs tailor-made business meetings with a content programme and peer-to-peer networking, bringing together chief information security officers, chief information officers, and technical directors with the most advanced solution providers in the cyber market. It is, in the Grimaldi Forum's own description, an accelerator for dialogue and decision-making: the deals and the doctrine of French cybersecurity, negotiated in the same building over four days.
Monaco's government treats the convention as more than a tenant. The 24th edition, in October 2024, was opened with an inaugural address by the Minister of State, Didier Guillaume, who used the occasion to call for collective action against growing cyber threats and to outline the principality's commitments, from the ratification of the Budapest Convention to support for the United Nations' convention on cybercrime. The 25th edition followed in October 2025, running from October 8 to 11. "In this uncertain environment," Guillaume told the 2024 opening, "to say that we need to 'strengthen the security of information systems' is to state the obvious."
The subtext is sovereignty. Monaco, a state of two square kilometres with an outsized financial sector and a brand built on trust, cannot afford to be anyone's weak link. The government has used the convention as a platform for its commitments, and its digital security agency keeps a dedicated space at the event each year, gathering the specialists who safeguard the principality's digital environment. The pattern is consistent: Monaco does not just host the conversation, it takes part in it.
There is a neat symmetry in the venue. The Grimaldi Forum, which hosts the cybersecurity establishment each autumn, has itself invested in AI-assisted surveillance and analytics across its spaces, a deployment covered in the security trade press in 2023. The building that welcomes the CISOs practises what they preach, at least where the cameras can see.
Twenty-six editions is a long run in cybersecurity, a field where the threat landscape reinvents itself annually. That Les Assises has endured, growing with the industry it serves, says something about Monaco's convening power: the principality's real product was never the casino or the circuit alone, but the room. Put the right people in it, every October, for a quarter of a century, and the room becomes an institution. This week, the institution meets again.
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