For six years, the Yacht Club de Monaco has quietly served as the drafting table where the future of the world’s coastlines is drawn. When the Monaco Smart & Sustainable Marina Rendezvous returns this 20th to 21st September, it will once again bring together the architects, investors, and operators tasked with dragging a traditionally conservative maritime sector into the modern era.
Organised by M3 Monaco, the two-day gathering has evolved from a niche networking event into a powerful catalyst for industry change. Backed by heavyweights including the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation and the MB92 Group, this year’s edition is set to draw roughly 250 delegates from across the globe.
“In six years, this meeting has become a catalyst for global change,” says José Marco Casellini, CEO of M3 Monaco. “We are not talking sustainability in the abstract; we foster the partnerships and technology transfers that turn sustainable marinas into operational reality.”
Photo credit: Mesi BD
Moving beyond the concrete car park
The shift is overdue. For decades, a marina was little more than a sheltered basin to park boats, often built with little regard for the surrounding marine ecosystem.
“A marina is no longer just a place to park boats,” points out Bernard d’Alessandri, Director and General Secretary of the Yacht Club de Monaco. “It’s an integral part of the local area that supports its development, and must address the environmental challenges and expectations of the new generations of recreational yachtsmen.”
Since its inception, the ecosystem has showcased 146 innovations from 28 nations, alongside 42 marina projects spanning 19 countries. Crucially, many of these concepts have successfully transitioned from the drawing board to commercial reality.
To sharpen the focus for investors this year, participating startups and tech firms will be strictly categorised by their commercial maturity: Pre-revenue, Post-revenue, and Scaling revenue. These solutions will be judged across seven core pillars—ranging from biodiversity preservation and energy production to water management and waste reduction—and catalogued online from mid-August.
Redefining standards and rewarding action
This year also marks a departure from traditional competitive formats. Rather than handing out one-off accolades, M3 Monaco is introducing the S3-Smart & Sustainable Standard label. Designed to reward continuous improvement, the certification will recognise marinas that have embedded long-term environmental and operational excellence into their daily business.
Meanwhile, the next generation of architects will turn their attention to the Adriatic. Entrants in the traditional design competition are tasked with reimagining Croatia’s Opatija Marina in Kvarner Bay. The brief demands a delicate balancing act: blending a modern ‘Marina Hub’ (complete with wellness areas, restaurants, and a harbour master’s office) with a dedicated marine biodiversity and sailing education centre, all while respecting local heritage. Finalists will pitch their designs to an international jury live in Monaco.
Keeping the conversation alive
Recognising that two days in September are rarely enough to overhaul global maritime infrastructure, organisers are launching Smart Marina Connect. This new year-round B2B digital platform is designed to bridge the gap between innovators and operators, ensuring that handshakes in the Principality translate into active projects long after the yachts have left the bay.
The Global Champions Arabians Tour made its Monaco debut this month, but for organisers the Principality represents far more than another stop on an international calendar. It is part of a long-term strategy to transform Arabian horse competition from a regional tradition into a global sporting brand.
For two days, Port Hercule became home to some of the world’s finest Purebred Arabian horses as the Global Champions Arabians Tour (GCAT) arrived in Monaco for the first time. The event welcomed 86 horses from several countries competing for a share of a $636,000 prize fund as the fourth stage of the 2026 Europe and Middle East circuit, with the top three horses in each championship qualifying for the World Arabian Horse Championship Supreme in Paris later this year.
But behind the competition lies a much broader ambition.
Speaking to Monaco Life’s Cassandra Tanti, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Nasser Al Thani, Deputy CEO of the Global Champions Arabians Tour, said Monaco was chosen not simply for its glamour, but because of its international reputation as a sporting destination capable of introducing Arabian horse competition to entirely new audiences.
“Monaco has an exceptional ability to bring together sport, culture and international influence in a way that very few destinations can,” he said. “For the Global Champions Arabians Tour, it represents the ideal environment to introduce the Arabian horse to new audiences while remaining true to its heritage. Hosting our inaugural Monaco stage is not simply about adding another destination to the calendar; it is about becoming part of one of the world’s most respected sporting and cultural landscapes.”
The strategy reflects Qatar’s wider investment in global sport over the past decade, but Sheikh Mohammed says Arabian horses occupy a unique place within that vision because they are inseparable from the country’s culture.
“The Arabian horse is an integral part of our history and identity, so investing in its international development is a natural extension of that vision,” he said. “Through GCAT, we are preserving an important cultural heritage while presenting it through a modern, world-class championship that resonates with audiences around the world.”
The challenge is balancing commercial expansion with protecting a tradition dating back more than 2,500 years. Arabian horses originated on the Arabian Peninsula, where Bedouin tribes selectively bred them for endurance, intelligence and loyalty before the bloodlines spread across Europe, Asia and Africa, influencing many modern horse breeds.
For Sheikh Mohammed, those two objectives are not in conflict.
“Commercial growth provides the resources needed to protect and promote the Arabian horse on a global scale, but heritage will always remain at the heart of everything we do,” he said. “Every decision we make is guided by a simple principle: to elevate the sport while respecting the history, traditions and values that have shaped it for centuries.”
Like many traditional sports, Arabian horse competition also faces the challenge of attracting younger audiences. Rather than changing the sport itself, GCAT has focused on how it is presented.
“We are investing in digital storytelling, innovative event experiences and world-class production to present the sport in ways that resonate with younger audiences without compromising its authenticity,” Sheikh Mohammed said. “Our goal is to create meaningful connections between people and the Arabian horse, ensuring that its remarkable heritage continues to be appreciated for generations to come.”
The economic benefits are also part of the equation. Beyond the competition, Sheikh Mohammed believes events such as GCAT create value through tourism, hospitality and international exposure while bringing together owners, breeders and industry professionals from around the world.
“Our ambition is to create partnerships that generate long-term value for every host city,” he said.
The inaugural Monaco stage also delivered memorable sporting performances. Dubai Arabian Horse Stud claimed both the Senior Stallions title with D Shahhar and the Senior Mares championship through D Najlah, while Al Wajba Stud won both junior championships with Aesar Al Wajba and Expectations Al Wajba.
The winners received specially designed Monaco-themed awards featuring Riviera blue detailing, golden sunflower motifs and crystal-embellished neckpieces inspired by the Principality.
With Monaco now added to a calendar spanning Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, the Tour continues next month in London before culminating in the World Arabian Horse Championship Supreme in Paris. For Sheikh Mohammed, however, success will not be measured simply by expansion.
“Our ambition is for GCAT to become the undisputed global benchmark for Arabian horse sport,” he said. “Growth is important, but it must always be purposeful.”
The Nouveau Musée National de Monaco (NMNM) is keeping Villa Paloma open into the evening three times this summer, with free access to its Victor Brauner exhibition, food and drink in the garden, and an open-air screening of a Palme d’Or winner’s most recent film.
The nocturnes run on Thursday 23rd July and Thursday 20th August, from 6pm to 9pm. On both evenings, Monaco Vinalia Gourmet will serve food and drinks at Régulus, and admission to Victor Brauner, L’Aventure magique will be free throughout.
A film in the garden
The centrepiece of the programme falls between the two, on Thursday 6th August. The evening follows the same pattern — Régulus open from 6pm, free entry to the Brauner exhibition until 9pm — before the garden turns into an outdoor cinema at 9pm for a screening of Memoria.
Released in 2021, the film is the work of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and stars Tilda Swinton alongside Elkin Díaz and Jeanne Balibar. Swinton plays a Scottish horticulturist specialising in orchids who travels to Bogotá to visit her ailing sister. During her stay she strikes up friendships with a French archaeologist overseeing a construction project and a young local musician, all while being pursued by a mysterious and deafening sound that nobody else can hear.
What follows is less a narrative than an immersion — a slow, sensory walk through the Colombian jungle in which image and sound bleed into one another, and which places Weerasethakul firmly in the lineage of the Surrealists. That connection gives the screening an obvious logic alongside the Brauner exhibition upstairs.
Weerasethakul shared the Jury Prize at Cannes for Memoria, 11 years after winning the Palme d’Or in 2010 for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, the first Thai film to take the festival’s top prize. Memoria runs for 136 minutes and will be screened in its original version with French subtitles.
Attendance is free but places must be booked in advance by emailing public@nmnm.mc.
Villa Paloma, photo source NMNM
The pavilion that cooks by sunlight
Régulus itself is worth arriving early for. The semicircular brick pavilion was created by architect and artist Guillaume Aubry and inaugurated by Princess Caroline of Hanover in July 2024, built along the original lines of Villa Paloma’s antique garden, laid out in 1913 by the landscape architect Octave Godard. It faces due south and follows the sun across the day, with a solar oven at its centre that heats and cooks what is served at the counter. The museum describes it as neither a café nor a cocktail bar nor an agora, but something of all three.
Brauner until January
The exhibition runs until 3rd January 2027 and brings together more than 160 paintings, drawings and sculptures tracing Victor Brauner’s career from the 1920s to the 1960s, drawn from a private collection assembled in Monaco. Ten non-Western objects once owned by the artist, on loan from the Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole, sit alongside them, with a scenography by Christophe Martin.
A man suspected of stealing jewellery worth more than €1 million from an elderly Monegasque resident while posing as a police officer has been arrested in France following a joint cross-border investigation, the Monaco Public Prosecutor’s Office announced on Wednesday.
According to the prosecutor, the theft took place on 14th July, when the suspect allegedly gained the victim’s trust by impersonating a police officer before making off with jewellery valued at more than €1 million.
The communiqué credits the rapid response of Monaco’s Sûreté Publique and close coordination with French police forces, working under the authority of several French public prosecutors, with quickly identifying the suspect and locating his home in France.
French authorities searched the suspect’s home on 17th July, where investigators “recovered numerous additional pieces of jewellery as well as a substantial amount of cash”. The prosecutor did not specify whether the recovered jewellery included the items stolen from the Monegasque victim.
The suspect was remanded in custody on 19th July after being formally charged by a French investigating magistrate with organised fraud (escroquerie en bande organisée) – suggesting investigators believe the suspect deceived the victim into handing over the jewellery, rather than stealing it through burglary or robbery. The investigation remains under the authority of the French judicial system and is continuing.
The Monaco Public Prosecutor’s Office released no further details regarding the suspect’s identity or whether investigators believe additional victims may be linked to the case.
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Hôtel Hermitage Monte-Carlo has inaugurated its first pop-up boutique, located just outside the new Gustave Bar. The boutique offers a curated collection of exclusive brands unavailable elsewhere on the French Riviera. Until 31st August, the pop-up invites guests to shop for swimwear, accessories, jewelry, bags, children’s toys, and more from 14 carefully selected brands.
One of the boutique’s standout collaborations is with IBELIV, which has renewed its partnership with Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer through a co-branded collection of raffia bags and hats. Liva Ramanandraibe, founder of the Madagascan brand, presented the new collection during the boutique’s opening evening. He told Monaco Life: “The lifestyle here is very much Dolce Vita, and our summer collections have always been inspired by the Mediterranean. It creates a natural connection between our craftsmanship, our techniques and the way of life here.”
Among the additional brands featured at the pop-up are colourful, creative handbags by Jamin Puech, exclusive pieces from the Scandinavian ready-to-wear label Almada, and sunglasses from Kering Eyewear.
Spanish brand Heimat Atlantica has collaborated with Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer on a collection of woven bags featuring decorative charms. Luxury lifestyle brand Perfect Moment has also taken this opportunity to unveil its swimwear collection, while Cannes-based designer Chynoax continues its collaboration with Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer through a range of clothing and accessories.
Corsican designer Maria Battaglia also offers a collection of jewelry inspired by the Mediterranean, with a portion of proceeds supporting the Mare Vivu association and its marine conservation efforts. Monaco-based brand Monoïkos 1297 completes the selection with pieces inspired by the Principality.
For younger visitors, a co-branded collection by Tartine et Chocolat and Monte-Carlo Société des Bains de Mer features soft toys and baby linens, while Moulin Roty and Maileg offer additional children’s collections.
Cardmaker Grimaud has a collection of playing cards available, while S.T. Dupont presents its iconic lighters and writing instruments.
Open daily from 11am to 7:30pm until 31st August, the boutique offers visitors the opportunity to discover exclusive collaborations and limited collections in the elegant surroundings of one of Monaco’s most iconic hotels.
When Carlo launched in Monaco in 2019, its founders were not setting out to build an online payment system. They were creating a cashback application designed to encourage people to shop locally.But running the platform meant confronting a problem that had frustrated Monaco businesses for years: accepting payments online in the Principality was far more difficult than it was in neighbouring France or elsewhere in Europe.
International platforms could not simply be connected to a Monaco business. The number of authorised providers was limited, smaller merchants were often unable to meet their requirements, and navigating the regulatory and technical system required specialist knowledge.
Over several years, the team behind Carlo was forced to solve each of those problems for its own platform. That experience ultimately enabled the company to create Core, which Carlo CEO Antoine Bahri describes as Monaco’s first locally developed online payment solution dedicated to Monégasque businesses.
“We had to face those issues constantly,” Bahri tells Monaco Life, “so we developed a solution specifically for Monaco.”
The challenge hidden behind Monaco’s borders
The first hurdle was regulatory. Payment institutions operating in the European Economic Area can generally obtain a licence in one participating country and use passporting arrangements to offer services across the wider market. Monaco, however, is not part of that system.
“Most payment institutions register in certain countries, including Ireland, the Netherlands and Lithuania, where obtaining a licence can be easier or the approach is considered more modern and less conservative,” explains Bahri. “They can then operate in France, Italy and the rest of the EU. However, because Monaco is not in the EU and its agreement is with the Bank of France, only payment providers registered with the Bank of France can operate in Monaco.”
That drastically reduces the number of companies available to Monaco merchants. Those that do operate in the Principality may focus on large clients, particular industries or businesses processing substantial payment volumes.
For an independent retailer or a start-up wanting to add a payment page to its website, the minimum transaction volumes demanded by some providers can be prohibitive. Others may consider the Monaco market too small to pursue.
This is why a business in France or the UK might be able to connect a payment platform and begin selling relatively quickly, while a Monaco company can discover that the same option is unavailable only after it has built its website or application.
The Core team
Carlo was forced to master the payments system
Carlo encountered these barriers while developing its cashback application.
The platform needed to process purchases and distribute payment flows across a growing network of merchants. That required its founders to understand not only how payments were authorised, but also how funds could be transferred to Monaco bank accounts, how different payment methods could be integrated and how the service could comply with the applicable French regulatory framework.
“The payments sector is very specific,” says Bahri. “It is an entire world in itself, and we learnt a great deal about it while building Carlo.”
Carlo worked with Lemon Way, a French payment institution specialising in marketplace businesses. The relationship gave the company access to payment infrastructure, but Carlo still had to build the technology and operational systems needed to manage its own network.
Today, Carlo works with more than 800 merchants. Handling payments across that network required the company to create an infrastructure capable of processing transactions and distributing funds reliably.
Security could not come at the expense of simplicity
Solving the regulatory problem was only one part of the challenge. Carlo also had to make payments secure without creating a cumbersome process.
“When you introduce a security system such as 3D Secure, you have to ensure that the customer journey remains frictionless,” says Bahri. “You do not want the payment process to become such a hassle that the customer has to complete too many validation stages. If there is too much friction, the customer will abandon the purchase.”
The company worked with specialists in Monaco on systems security and GDPR compliance. Bahri says the Principality’s established banking industry made it possible to find companies accustomed to handling sensitive personal and financial information.
“Monaco is well prepared in this regard because it has banks that handle highly sensitive personal and financial information,” he says. “From a very early stage, we were able to find people who could guide us through these issues and help us implement appropriate security measures around payments.”
Each transaction processed through Carlo also helped the company understand how customers behaved, how suspicious activity could be identified and where limits or additional verification were needed.
Monaco Taxi online app was possible thanks to Core
Monaco Taxi became the decisive breakthrough
Once Carlo had established a functioning payment infrastructure, other Monaco businesses began taking notice. By 2021 and 2022, companies were approaching the team for help implementing payment systems similar to Carlo’s. The requests revealed that its internal solution could address a much wider problem.
The turning point came in 2024, when Carlo began building a tailored payment system for Monaco Taxi. The project took the infrastructure developed for Carlo and applied it to a separate Monaco service. The resulting payment solution launched in April 2025, allowing customers to pay for taxi journeys digitally. It proved that the technology could work beyond Carlo’s own cashback platform.
“That’s when we decided to turn it into a separate product and launch Core,” says Bahri. “It only took us about six months – because the infrastructure was already there.”
The breakthrough was therefore not a single technological invention. It was the culmination of several years spent solving Monaco’s regulatory, banking, security and customer-experience problems one at a time.
Turning a tailored solution into two products
Core was created with two principal services. Core PayLink allows a business to send a customer a payment link without building a complete e-commerce website. The merchant can track the transaction and receive confirmation when it has been completed, while the customer can pay using Visa, Mastercard or Apple Pay.
The product now has more than 60 clients, including retailers, concierge companies and car and limousine services.
It is particularly useful during events such as the Monaco Grand Prix, when customers may want to order flowers, reserve a service or purchase a product before arriving in the Principality.
Core Checkout provides a payment page that can be integrated directly into a website or application. It is aimed partly at the start-ups establishing projects in Monaco that need to process payments or operate digital marketplaces.
Apple Pay reveals how quickly payment habits are changing
Building a Monaco-specific solution also means responding to the habits of an unusually international customer base. Many Monaco consumers travel frequently and expect to use the same payment methods they rely on elsewhere. Yet not every provider authorised to operate in the Principality offers those options.
Carlo introduced Apple Pay in February 2026. According to Bahri, around 20% of its users adopted it within the following few months. The company is now considering Wero, a European digital payment system supported by a group of banks, along with direct bank payments using open-banking technology.
“We know that we need to adapt continuously,” says Bahri. “We are also working on introducing direct debit through open banking, allowing customers to register their bank accounts and make payments with less friction.”
Why Monaco became the ideal testing ground
Monaco’s unusual regulatory position created the original problem, but its size helped Carlo solve it. With merchants, customers, financial specialists and government departments concentrated in a small area, feedback came quickly and the technology could be adjusted in response, while the Principality’s international population brought experience of payment products used in other markets, showing what customers expected of a modern system.
“It is a particularly interesting place to use as a laboratory. For us, it was the best possible testing ground,” said Bahri.
From in-house fix to commercial product
Carlo has since expanded into Aix-en-Provence and Bordeaux, and the technology developed in Monaco is now offered through Core Ecosystem, a white-label payment and rewards platform for resorts, shopping centres and territories. Core exists because Carlo’s founders had to understand Monaco’s payment problem in order to build their original platform, and the system they built for themselves, refined across hundreds of merchants and proved through Monaco Taxi, is now a service for the wider business community.
