Tezos will host its annual global gathering of developers and innovators on March 30 in Cannes, France, with a program focused on real-world applications with sessions highlighting Tezos.
Transition code and experience
The Tezos ecosystem returns to Cannes, France on March 30 for Tezdev 2026. This fifth annual free event brings together global developers and creators near the Ethereum Community Conference to showcase blockchain innovation. This year’s flagship addition is the XP Zone, an interactive environment designed to bridge the gap between abstract code and tangible experience. Attendees will enter an immersive 360-degree room to interact live with projects currently evolving on the network.
To boost engagement, the event will feature Tezquest, a series of hands-on challenges hosted at various project booths. With a prize pool of $7,000, participants can compete while exploring innovations from a diverse roster of ecosystem leaders.
Linda Witters, senior marketing manager at Trilitech, emphasized that this change was intentional.
“TezQuest is designed as an interactive layer of TezDev, turning the event into a hands-on experience rather than a series of discussions,” Witters said. “Instead of just listening to presentations, attendees are encouraged to explore projects across the ecosystem, take on challenges, and interact directly with teams building on Tezos. … This reflects a broader shift in crypto events toward participation rather than passive participation, especially as products become more mature and user-facing.”
Specific challenges include architecting market-building strategies with Hanji, a decentralized exchange, and playing the latest mobile games released on the network. Other participating projects include Ledger, Uranium.io and Sogni. Art on Tezos and Fortify Labs will showcase the creative community and the next generation of Tezos accelerators.
Technical breakthroughs
According to a press release, this year’s program moves from theoretical infrastructure to real-world application. Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, will deliver a keynote speech exploring the next phase of the network, highlighting how products and user experiences must evolve to accelerate global adoption.
Technical sessions will raise the curtain on Tezos X, the network’s ambitious scalability roadmap. Highlights include François Thiré of Nomadic Labs, who will explain how Tezos solves coordination between executions at the protocol level. Engineers will discuss Etherlink’s recent achievements, including a drop in transaction confirmations from around 500 milliseconds to less than 50 milliseconds.
Yann Régis-Gianas, also of Nomadic Labs, will demonstrate how AI agents are integrated directly into the Tezos software development lifecycle, while a panel featuring Ben Elvidge of Trilitech will explore the journey from proof of concept to real-world asset liquidity.
The conference comes on the heels of a year of transformation for the ecosystem. Etherlink, the Tezos EVM-enabled Layer 2, saw its total value locked skyrocket by over 6,200% following the launch of the Apple Farm incentive program. This growth was supported by the deployment of major industry protocols like Uniswap, through OKU, Gearbox and Lombard Finance.
The Tezos art scene also continues to dominate the “clean” non-fungible token (NFT) space, recording over 500,000 sales in 2025 and entering into historic institutional partnerships with the Processing Foundation and the Museum of the Moving Image.
The day will conclude with an immersive art exhibition celebrating the generative and on-chain artists who have made Tezos a leading destination for digital culture.
FAQs ❓
- When and where will Tezdev 2026 take place? Tezdev returns to the Martinez Hotel in Cannes on March 30, 2026.
- What makes this year’s event unique? The new XP Zone offers an immersive 360-degree room to interact with Tezos projects live.
- How can participants get involved beyond discussions? Tezquest Challenges allow participants to compete for $7,000 in prizes while exploring ecosystem booths.
- What topics will be covered during the sessions? Keynotes and panels highlight Tezos X scalability, Etherlink speed gains, and AI integration.