Gold has had several exceptionally strong years, and its price has reached levels that would have seemed very distant not that long ago. Yet higher prices do not appear to be discouraging central banks from buying the metal. Quite the opposite. Central Banks Want More Gold, and the latest World Gold Council survey for 2026 shows that interest in increasing gold reserves has reached a new record.
According to the survey, 45% of the central banks surveyed expect to increase their own gold reserves over the next 12 months. That is the highest figure ever recorded in the survey. In 2025, 43% of respondents gave the same answer, while in 2024 the figure was only 29%.
The move from 43% to 45% may not look especially dramatic at first glance. The picture becomes much more interesting when we look several years further back. In 2019, only around 11% of surveyed central banks expected to increase their own gold reserves. Today, we are talking about almost half.
For me, this longer-term shift is one of the most interesting changes taking place in the gold market. Central Banks Want More Gold even after a substantial rise in prices, suggesting that this is about much more than short-term market movements or reactions to geopolitical events. The attitude of institutions managing some of the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world is changing.
From 11% to a Record 45%
Looking at the individual years makes the scale of the change much clearer. In 2019, approximately 11% of respondents expected to increase their own reserves. That share rose to 20% in 2020 and to 25% in 2022. In 2023, it slipped slightly to 24%, before climbing again to 29% in 2024.
Then came a much sharper jump.
In 2025, 43% of surveyed central banks expected to increase their own gold reserves, and in 2026 the figure reached a record 45%.
This development is interesting for more than just the number itself. It shows how much central bank thinking about gold has changed in only a few years. Not long ago, the group of institutions planning additional purchases was relatively small. Today, their share is approaching half of all respondents.
And this is happening at a time when gold is certainly not cheap. Central banks are not buying simply because the market is offering an unusually attractive price. Their interest has remained strong even after a substantial rise in the value of gold.
That is an important detail.
A private investor often focuses heavily on whether they are buying at a good price today, next week, or a few months from now. A central bank has a completely different time horizon. It manages national reserves and thinks in terms of many years, sometimes decades. Short-term price movements therefore do not necessarily carry the same weight in its decision-making as they do for an individual investor.
In this environment, gold serves primarily a strategic role. It is not another country’s liability, it is not a claim on a foreign bank, and its existence does not depend on another counterparty being able to meet its obligations. If physical gold is genuinely under the control of a central bank or the state itself, it represents a reserve asset with very specific characteristics.
That may be one of the reasons why demand for it remains strong even at significantly higher prices.
It Is Not Just About Expectations — Central Banks Have Already Been Buying for Years
Surveys are one thing. Actual purchases matter even more.
And this is where the story becomes much more significant. Over the past four years, central banks have purchased an average of approximately 1,000 tonnes of gold per year. By comparison, the average during the previous decade was roughly 500 tonnes annually.
In other words, the pace of purchases has roughly doubled in recent years.
That is already a volume that cannot be ignored when looking at the global gold market. Central banks have become one of the major sources of long-term demand, and their activity is helping create a very different market environment from some earlier periods.
What stands out most is that the buying has continued despite rising prices. Under normal circumstances, we might expect a sharp increase in the price of an asset to discourage at least some buyers. So far, central banks have shown a strong willingness to continue.
That makes sense if short-term returns are not their main objective.
A central bank does not buy gold because it expects to sell it a few months later for 10% more. From a reserve-management perspective, the priorities are diversification, security, liquidity, and preserving value over a long time horizon.
In that case, the question can gradually shift from “Is gold too expensive?” to “How much of our reserves do we want to hold in an asset that does not carry another counterparty’s credit risk?”
That is a completely different way of thinking.
The large purchases of recent years also create a kind of underlying layer of demand that was not present with the same intensity in earlier periods. Of course, we should not assume that central banks will automatically buy exactly 1,000 tonnes every year. Annual volumes can vary significantly. Some institutions may slow their purchases, while others may accelerate them.
What matters is the direction we have been seeing for several years. And the latest survey shows that the appetite for adding more gold has not disappeared.
89% of Central Banks Expect Global Gold Reserves to Keep Rising
One more number from the survey deserves attention. A full 89% of respondents expect total global central bank gold reserves to increase over the next 12 months.
There are two different questions here, and the distinction matters.
One asks whether a central bank expects its own reserves to increase. A record 45% answered yes. The other asks about expectations for total central bank gold reserves worldwide. That figure rises to 89%.
The difference is important. Nearly nine out of ten respondents therefore expect the central banking sector as a whole to continue adding gold over the coming year.
That provides a strong indication of how central banks themselves view the broader trend.
It does not mean that 89% of central banks will personally be buyers. Some may leave their reserves unchanged, while others could even become net sellers during a particular period. Still, the overwhelming majority expect the global trend toward higher central bank gold reserves to continue.
For the market, it also matters that we are not talking about a small group of private investors reacting to the latest headlines. Central banks manage enormous pools of assets, and changes in their long-term allocation can influence demand for many years.
Think about the difference between a one-off investor purchase and the systematic construction of reserves. If a country decides that it wants to increase gold’s share within its reserves, it does not have to buy everything within a few weeks. The process can be spread over a much longer period.
That is why I pay more attention to the broader trend in central bank behavior than to any single month or quarter.
And right now, that trend remains very strong.
Gold Is Taking on Greater Strategic Weight in Reserves
The basic reasons central banks hold gold have not changed dramatically. They include reserve diversification, protection during periods of crisis, and the ability to preserve value over long time horizons.
In recent years, however, those characteristics have received far more attention.
The global economy has gone through a pandemic, high inflation, a sharp rise in interest rates, and an increasingly tense geopolitical environment. At the same time, public debt levels in major economies have continued to rise, while relationships between some of the world’s largest powers have become considerably more complicated than they were ten or fifteen years ago.
In that kind of environment, gold has one characteristic that many other reserve assets do not: it is not someone else’s liability.
When a central bank holds a foreign government bond, it owns a financial claim. When it holds a currency or a bank deposit, there is again a counterparty and a connection to the financial system. Physical gold works differently.
The physical nature of gold is crucial in this context. Central banks are not buying a story about the gold price displayed on a screen. They are building actual reserves of metal. For a country that wants to hold part of its reserves outside the traditional system of claims and liabilities, that is a characteristic that is difficult to replace.
This also explains why I would not view central bank gold purchases in the same way as ordinary investment speculation.
If someone buys a gold futures contract in an attempt to profit from a price move over the next few weeks, that is a completely different transaction from a central bank adding physical metal to long-term national reserves.
Price obviously matters in both cases, but the purpose of holding the asset is fundamentally different.
And the fact that central banks continue building physical gold reserves even after a substantial rise in price strikes me as far more relevant to the long-term gold market than most short-term price forecasts.
Gold Purchases Are Changing the Structure of Global Reserves
There is another important aspect behind the current trend. It is not only about how many tonnes of gold central banks buy each year. The way countries structure their reserves, and how they think about allocating them, is also changing.
For a long time, it was completely normal to hold a large share of reserves in major global currencies and, above all, in government bonds issued by the world’s largest economies. That system is not disappearing. The dollar, the euro, and other reserve currencies will continue to play a major role. But current developments show that many countries do not want to rely entirely on financial assets tied to a single currency or a single financial system.
This is where gold gains more room.
There does not need to be any dramatic move away from the dollar for this process to have a major impact on the gold market. Global foreign exchange reserves are so large that even a relatively small change in their structure can represent a significant amount of money.
If a central bank decides to gradually increase gold’s share of its reserves, that does not necessarily mean one enormous purchase. It can keep buying the metal over several years, take advantage of weaker periods in the market, and build the desired position step by step.
To me, that kind of process matters more than one exceptionally strong year.
A one-off purchase can disappear just as quickly as it appeared. A long-term change in reserve policy can create demand for years.
It is also interesting to look at where this demand is coming from. In some emerging economies, part of the motivation may be to build reserves that are less concentrated in foreign currencies. Some countries still have a relatively low share of gold in their total reserves compared with developed economies, which means there may still be considerable room for further purchases.
This does not have to be some coordinated escape from traditional reserve currencies, as it is sometimes portrayed. A gradual diversification process seems far more realistic. A country does not need to sell all of its dollar reserves in order to want to own more gold at the same time.
It only needs to decide that gold should carry more weight within its reserves.
And if a larger number of central banks begin thinking in the same direction, those individual decisions gradually add up.
This process can be slow and almost invisible at first. That is exactly why its long-term importance can easily be overlooked.
In the gold market, enormous attention is often given to what the Federal Reserve will do at its next meeting, how interest rates will change, or where the dollar will move over the next few weeks. These factors can certainly move the gold price sharply in the short term.
A change in the structure of global reserves is a completely different story. It happens slowly, but its impact can last much longer.
If central banks continue gradually increasing gold’s share of their reserves over the coming years, the market gains a buyer whose decisions are not driven solely by the latest sentiment in financial markets.
And this part of the current trend could remain important for gold long after today’s price movements have been forgotten.
Another interesting question is the availability of the metal itself.
At first glance, it may seem strange to talk about limited gold supply. There is an enormous amount of gold in the world that has been mined throughout history, and a large share of it still exists in one form or another. But not all of that gold is actually for sale.
That is a crucial distinction.
A gold bar that has been sitting in a central bank vault for decades still exists statistically, but it may not be available to the market. The same is true for investment gold held for the long term or for jewelry. These holdings do not automatically represent supply that a new buyer can immediately access.
So price does not only determine how much gold exists in the world. It also has to convince the current owner to sell.
If more large institutions move into the category of long-term holders, this question could become even more important over time.
New mine production adds more gold to the market every year, but its ability to respond is limited. Building a new mine is a capital-intensive process, and many years can pass between discovering a quality deposit and reaching regular commercial production.
Mining companies need more than just a high gold price. They also need suitable geology, financing, infrastructure, permits, and economically viable operating costs.
Supply therefore cannot react to changes in demand as quickly as it can in industries where production can be expanded significantly within a few months.
If a new long-term buyer enters the market, the metal has to come from somewhere else — through new mine production, recycling, or a higher price that persuades some existing holders to sell.
And this is where central bank purchases can gradually affect the broader market far more than the headline number of tonnes purchased might initially suggest.
What Could the Current Trend Mean for the Years Ahead?
The biggest question is not whether central bank gold purchases will break records every year. What matters more is whether this shift becomes a lasting part of the gold market.
If it does, gold could benefit from a more stable source of institutional demand. That does not mean prices will rise continuously. Interest rates, the dollar, investment flows, recycling, jewelry demand, and market sentiment will continue to create volatility.
From a long-term perspective, however, what matters is who is buying physical gold and how long they intend to hold it.
Central banks are different from most market participants. Once gold enters national reserves, it is often held for many years. This can gradually reduce the amount of metal circulating in the market.
Every year, new supply comes from mining and recycling. Jewelry manufacturers, investors, funds, technology companies, and central banks all compete for that metal. If central banks continue absorbing a significant share of supply, the market eventually has to adjust through higher supply, weaker demand elsewhere, or price.
Central bank purchases therefore do not need to keep setting records to remain important. They only need to remain significant net buyers.
Another factor worth watching is how many countries participate. If purchases were concentrated among only a few central banks, a change in policy at one or two institutions could quickly weaken the trend. A broader increase in interest across many countries would make the shift much more significant.
Geopolitics may strengthen this process as well.
Sanctions, frozen foreign reserves, and growing tensions between major powers have shown that reserve management is not only about returns. Control over assets also matters. Physical gold stored domestically has a clear advantage here: the country controls the metal directly without depending on a foreign counterparty.
None of this requires the collapse of the current monetary system or a sudden move away from the dollar. Even a gradual increase in gold’s share of global reserves could create substantial additional demand because the size of worldwide financial reserves is enormous.
For holders of physical gold, this is particularly interesting over the long term.
Gold prices will still experience corrections, sometimes significant ones. But national reserve strategies change much more slowly than investor sentiment. Once central banks begin changing the structure of their reserves, that process can continue for years.
That is why I would watch more than just the number of tonnes purchased each year. The number of central banks joining the trend, the share of gold within their reserves, and whether demand remains strong during future price corrections may tell us much more.
The current numbers already provide a strong long-term backdrop for physical gold. Not because central banks can predict the next price move, but because more of them appear to want gold to play a larger role in their reserves.
If that continues, this may prove to be a structural trend lasting many years rather than just another short-term chapter in the gold market.
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