NFT Paris, Europe’s biggest annual conference for the Web3, NFT, and digital ownership community, has been cancelled just a month before it was set to open at the Grande Halle de la Villette. The organizers said that current market conditions made the event financially impossible.
“The [crypto and NFT] market collapse hit us hard,” NFT Paris’ founder, Alexandre Tsydenkov, wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday. “Despite drastic cost cuts and months of trying to make it work, we couldn’t pull it off this year.”
NFT Paris’ sister event at the same venue, RWA Paris, a summit focused on real-world assets, has also been shelved.
Both events had run for four years and were known for spotlighting digital art, digital galleries, and AI-generated works. At NFT Paris, for example, Superchief Gallery NFT teamed up with Claire Silver for an exhibition showcasing 39 AI-enabled artists, while artist Jeff Davis turned generative algorithms into physical stained-glass panels, crafted by Ateliers Loire de Chartres. But in recent years, the conferences had started to shift toward a broader tech and blockchain focus.
“Art represented only a very small share of its ecosystem, likely less than 5 percent of NFT Paris’ sponsors,”John Karp, organizer of the Non-Fungible Token Conference, told ARTnews. “From that perspective, its cancellation does not say much about the current state of NFT art itself.”
“To our team — thank you for everything,” Tsydenkov added. “You’re talented people who deserved a better outcome… Looking back at four years, we’re proud of what we built together: tens of thousands of attendees, hundreds of speakers, and countless connections made. But endings are tough.”
He also confirmed that all tickets will be refunded. General admission tickets were around $231, while VIP Access tickets cost roughly $1,161.
Karp said that “recent signals show that NFT art remains present and relevant within more established art contexts.”
“The digital sector ZERO10 at Art Basel Miami and the digital section at Paris Photo have both demonstrated strong interest,” he told ARTnews. “If we look specifically at NFT-only and NFT art-focused events, the Non-Fungible Conference in Lisbon continues to grow and attract a committed audience.”
Since the peak of the global NFT craze in 2021, the bubble has burst. Back then, Sotheby’s and Christie’s sold NFTs for millions, while celebrities like Jimmy Fallon, Snoop Dogg, and Paris Hilton — and brands including Louis Vuitton and YouTube — jumped on board. But NFT sales have since fallen from $4 billion to around $800 million, and according to NFT Evening, about 96 percent of NFT collectionsare now considered “dead.”
Tsydenkov did not respond to ARTnews’ request for comment.
