European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde announced on Thursday that she will leave her post at the head of the eurozone's central bank early next year.

“I have just informed my colleagues that I will step down as @ECB President on 7 February 2027,” Lagarde said in a Thursday post on X.

Lagarde has led the ECB since November 2019 and will have served about seven years and three months when she leaves office, ahead of the end of her eight-year term in October 2027. As president, she has chaired the ECB's Governing Council, the decision-making body that sets interest rates and monetary policy for the euro area.

Her successor will be appointed by the European Council under the nomination procedure set out in Article 283 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which requires a recommendation from the Council after consultations with the European Parliament and the central bank, the ECB said in a Thursday press release. The same procedure produced Lagarde's own appointment in 2019, and Article 283 limits the president to a single, non-renewable eight-year term. No successor has been announced.

Speculation about an early exit first emerged in February 2026, when anonymous sources told the Financial Times that Lagarde was considering leaving before her term ends in October 2027.

Digital euro work and tokenized settlement

Under her presidency, the ECB advanced preliminary work on a digital euro designed for day-to-day payments. In September, it launched Pontes, a system that enables financial institutions to settle wholesale tokenized asset transactions in central bank money, offering an alternative to stablecoins. Her successor will inherit both initiatives.

A vocal Bitcoin critic

Lagarde has been a vocal critic of Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrencies. During a press conference in January 2025, she said that central bank reserves “need to be liquid, secure and safe,” adding that she was “confident” that Bitcoin would not enter the reserves of any of the central banks of the General Council. She has also previously argued that stablecoins will not strengthen the global role of the euro.

A lawyer by profession, Lagarde served as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 2011 to 2019 — the first woman to hold that post — and previously held the position of France’s Minister of the Economy. When she took office at the ECB, she became the first woman to lead the eurozone's central bank. Her tenure at the ECB spanned several major crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent energy crisis, as well as the inflation surge that prompted the fastest run of interest rate increases in the euro’s history.