Sri Lanka will hold its first FinTech Festival in Colombo in November, an event the organisers say is intended to position the country in the regional digital finance market.
The Sri Lanka FinTech Festival 2026 runs on November 2 and 3 at Shangri-La Colombo and is organised by the Fintech Forum Sri Lanka together with the Ministry of Digital Economy, Ada Derana and Hiru News reported on Wednesday. Deputy Minister of Digital Economy Eranga Weeraratna confirmed the dates.
The festival was announced at a press conference at Amari Colombo on Tuesday, where organisers also launched the event website.
Two days, two audiences
The programme opens on November 2 with CEOs Night, an invitation-only gathering of banking and fintech chief executives, the Fintech Forum’s board and advisory committee, speakers, government representatives and Central Bank of Sri Lanka officials.
November 3 is the public-facing day. The Sri Lanka FinTech Expo is expected to draw more than 500 participants for keynote addresses, panel discussions and an exhibition where firms can show technology and solutions to potential partners. The festival closes with a networking reception billed as FinTech Night.
What will be discussed
Organisers set out four themes: the future of fintech, building unicorns and modernisation, sustainable and inclusive fintech, and security and fraud.
Sessions are to cover national digital finance policy and regulation, regulatory sandboxes, digital assets, cross-border payments and remittances, artificial intelligence in finance, tokenisation, digital public infrastructure and digital identity, financial inclusion, SME finance and tourism payments.
Both reports drew heavily on the organisers’ statement, which argued that Sri Lanka has already built digital finance infrastructure and that the festival would demonstrate the country’s readiness to take part in the next phase of financial innovation. Neither carried independent assessment of that claim, and no figures were given for expected exhibitors, investment or delegate spend.
The Ministry of Digital Economy has been the government’s lead agency on a series of service-digitisation projects, including a plan to move public service delivery from a person-based to a system-based model that Weeraratne set out in June.
A separately branded Sri Lanka FinTech Summit has been staged in Colombo in previous years. Neither report addressed how the new festival relates to it.
