The 2026 Lujiazui Forum, the annual financial industrial gathering, will be held in Shanghai from June 17 to 18, officials said during a municipal news conference on Friday.

Ding Xiangqun, minister of the National Financial Regulatory Administration, will attend the forum's opening ceremony and deliver a keynote speech. Over 70 guests from China's central financial regulatory bodies, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Hungarian National Bank, among others, will participate and share their insights.

This year's forum will mainly address the new challenges and opportunities amid the changing global financial landscape and the accelerated development of emerging technologies.

It will also touch upon the topics of global cooperation in financial governance, completion of the capital market, financial synergy between Shanghai and Hong Kong, financial support for technology advancement, integrating new technologies in financial services, inclusive finance and sustainable financial innovation.

Shanghai, which has held the forum since 2008, has been deepening its financial supply-side reform over the past few years to better facilitate companies' outbound reaches, Zhou Xiaoquan, executive deputy director of the Financial Commission Office of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee, said on Friday.

The city has continued to improve the foreign exchange risk management services, with the corporate foreign exchange hedging ratio reaching 37.8 percent at present, 7.9 percentage points higher than the national average, Zhou said.

It has also stepped up financial support for domestically produced commercial aircraft. A total of nine batches of free trade offshore bonds have been issued within the city, with the combined value amounting to 3.2 billion yuan ($473.2 million), he added.

Over 1,600 cross-border renminbi fund pools have been built in the city, making cross-border transfers more convenient. More than 10 billion yuan of refinancing support has been provided through structural monetary policy tools such as cross-border trade refinancing and blockchain-based letter of credit refinancing for trade and shipping, according to Zhou.

In December, the People's Bank of China Shanghai head office officially launched a pilot program to upgrade free trade account functions. To date, 11 banks and 37 enterprises have participated in the program. Their total cross-border fund receipts and payments have exceeded 120 billion yuan, covering general trade, processing trade, offshore trade, services trade, cross-border financing and overseas lending.

Meanwhile, Shanghai continues to deepen the two-way opening-up of its capital market and products.

Shanghai Stock Exchange has extended its ETF connectivity programs to the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Singapore and Brazil. Since the beginning of this year, a number of products have been opened to international investors, including nickel futures and options, international copper options, and treasury bond futures on the China Financial Futures Exchange.

All these have helped to enhance the global influence of "Shanghai prices", Zhao Guofu, deputy director of the Shanghai regulatory bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said.

Six wholly foreign-owned fund management companies have achieved cross-border data transmission in the Lin-gang New Area of the China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone. On the other hand, 15 Shanghai-based financial institutions have established overseas subsidiaries, with their services available in Europe, the United States, Singapore, Vietnam, and beyond.