Cardano Foundation cancels 2026 Singapore summit after vote fails

The Cardano Foundation said it will cancel the planned Cardano Summit 2026 in Singapore after an on-chain treasury vote to fund the event failed to reach the required supermajority. The summit had been scheduled for October 5–6.

Voting on the revised proposal closed May 29 and expired without ratification. The measure drew 65.21% of participating delegated representative (DRep) stake, below the roughly 66.67% needed for treasury withdrawals. By headcount, 135 delegates voted in favor, 61 opposed and 24 abstained.

The Constitutional Committee had approved the request before it went to a vote. The Foundation, which holds voting power as a DRep, abstained from the summit ballot to avoid directing the outcome and said it will begin winding down plans that depended on the treasury withdrawal. In a post on X, the Foundation said governance requires participation and a commitment to accept collective decisions.

The proposal sought 7.8 million ADA, roughly $2 million, to stage the two-day summit. That request was a reduced version of an earlier 14.07 million ADA proposal that combined the summit with an EMURGO-run TOKEN2049 sponsorship. After the Foundation separated the two events, the summit budget was trimmed by more than 20% and included additional financial safeguards such as audited fund management, milestone-gated payments and an independent oversight committee.

EMURGO’s separate TOKEN2049 sponsorship was approved after the split, and the Foundation voted in favor of that Platinum Sponsorship, preserving a Cardano presence at the major Singapore crypto conference.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson and Cardano Foundation CEO Frederik Gregaard each urged DReps to back the revised summit proposal in the hours before voting closed. The vote follows several recent disputes over treasury spending, where delegated representatives have pushed back on funding requests tied to Hoskinson, EMURGO and Input Output Global, as well as a scaled-back IOG funding package linked to the Leios mainnet effort.

Because the summit proposal expired without ratification, the Foundation will stop execution of plans that required the treasury withdrawal. The result highlights Cardano’s stake-weighted governance process, in which large treasury outlays require roughly a two-thirds supermajority of DRep stake to pass.

ADA traded near $0.233 on Sunday, down about 5% over the past month and ranked around 16th by market capitalization.