Central Banks Are Buying More Gold — and Rethinking Where They Keep It

China added about 20 tonnes of gold in July, its 21st consecutive month of buying. The Dutch central bank added nothing — but moved the economic equivalent of 86 tonnes out of New York and Ottawa toward London, and said why. Together they show gold being managed as an active reserve asset whose location, form and liquidity matter as much as its quantity. We check the figures, add the context the headlines left out, and ask what the custody question means for an individual investor.

Published September 5, 2026 · Updated September 24, 2026 · 16 min read

Key Takeaways

• The People’s Bank of China reported adding about 20 tonnes in July 2026, its 21st consecutive monthly purchase, taking year-to-date additions to roughly 60 tonnes and reported holdings to about 2,366 tonnes — still only around 8% of China’s reserves.
• Poland has bought roughly 90 tonnes in 2026 and holds about 640 tonnes against a stated 700-tonne goal; Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the Czech National Bank kept buying. Central banks bought a net 289 tonnes in the second quarter — the strongest second quarter in the World Gold Council’s series, but after a first quarter of only about 57 tonnes.
• De Nederlandsche Bank did not buy an ounce. Between March and August it shifted the economic equivalent of about 86 tonnes — just over a quarter of what it held in North America — from New York and Ottawa toward London: about 59 tonnes were sold in New York and rebought in London; more than 27 tonnes were shipped to the Netherlands while Dutch-held market-standard bars went to London. London now holds 32.1% of the 612-tonne reserve; New York and Ottawa 18.5% each; Zeist 30.8%.
• The reason DNB gave is tradability. Gold at the Bank of England sits on an allocated basis, in London Good Delivery form, next to the world’s deepest physical market. In the World Gold Council’s 2026 survey, 57% of central banks named the Bank of England as a vaulting location, more than any other, and the share that had diversified their overseas vaults in the past year rose from 2% to 10%.
• Gold has no issuer, but the structure you hold it through does. Custody, jurisdiction, access and counterparty risk apply to an individual’s vault account or ETF just as they do to a sovereign reserve. Knowing which of those risks you carry is as important as deciding what share of a portfolio to allocate.

Between March and August 2026 the Dutch central bank moved the economic equivalent of about 86 tonnes of gold — 14% of its 612.4-tonne reserve — out of New York and Ottawa and into London, without adding a single net ounce. In the same summer the People’s Bank of China reported its 21st consecutive month of buying, and Poland kept adding toward a stated 700-tonne target. One story is about how much gold central banks hold; the other is about where they keep it. For a reserve asset that is meant to perform in a crisis, ownership turns out to be only part of the equation. Liquidity, custody, location and access matter too.

Gold has been moving back toward the centre of reserve management for several years — we set out the scale of that shift, and the gap between China’s reported and estimated holdings, in our April look at record central-bank buying. Two developments in the summer of 2026 add a second dimension to that trend: not only how much gold central banks hold, but where and in what form they hold it. The People’s Bank of China added about 20 tonnes in July alone. De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the Dutch central bank, restructured where a substantial part of its existing gold is held.

These are different transactions with different motives. What they share is that each central bank treated its gold as an asset with several separate settings — quantity, location, bar form, liquidity and access — and adjusted one of them on purpose. All weights in this article are metric tonnes unless stated; China’s official figures are in fine troy ounces (32,150.7 troy ounces to the tonne). Central-bank purchase data run through the end of July 2026 as compiled by the World Gold Council on September 3, 2026; the Dutch figures come from DNB’s September 2 release.

China Is Still Adding Gold

China’s official accumulation has picked up. According to the World Gold Council, the People’s Bank of China added approximately 20 tonnes in July 2026, after roughly 10 tonnes in May and 15 tonnes in June — the largest monthly addition since October 2023. July marked the central bank’s 21st consecutive month of reported buying, the longest streak on record. Our August analysis of China’s strategy looked at the behaviour behind that streak — most of this year’s buying arrived while the price was falling — and at the Hong Kong vaulting story that sits alongside it.

21 months Consecutive months of reported gold purchases by the People’s Bank of China, through July 2026. The underlying figure comes from China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange, which reported 76.08 million fine troy ounces at the end of July, up from 75.44 million at the end of June — a rise of about 0.64 million ounces, or roughly 20 tonnes. Year-to-date additions are roughly 60 tonnes, second only to Poland; reported holdings are about 2,366 tonnes — the sixth-largest reported holding in the World Gold Council’s table, which counts the IMF, and the fifth-largest among countries now that Russia has sold about 50 tonnes this year.

Gold is around 8% of China’s reported reserves, which leaves its mix far less gold-heavy than that of the large Western holders: the United States, Germany, Italy and France each keep well over half of their reserves in gold. Official holdings can be compared country by country on the World Atlas, under gold and the Official Reserves view.

China is also far from the only buyer. Through July 2026:

• Poland had bought approximately 90 tonnes in 2026, taking reported holdings to about 640 tonnes — roughly 28% of its reserves — against the 700-tonne target its central bank set in January.
• Uzbekistan had added about 40 tonnes for the year despite a 1-tonne sale in July; gold is now roughly 87% of its reserves.
• Kazakhstan had added roughly 29 tonnes, which the World Gold Council counts as a top-five accumulation.
• The Czech National Bank bought 2 tonnes in July, its 41st consecutive month of net buying, taking its holdings to about 84 tonnes against a stated goal of 100 tonnes by 2028.
• Malaysia and Bolivia, both new entrants, each bought a tonne in July and have added 6 and 2 tonnes respectively this year.

The World Gold Council’s broader demand estimates show that central banks and other official institutions purchased a net 289 tonnes during the second quarter of 2026 — the strongest second quarter in its series and up 62% on a year earlier. That figure needs its context. The Council revised its first-quarter estimate from 244 tonnes down to 57 tonnes after reclassifying a large block of buying as over-the-counter investment, so the first half of 2026 totalled roughly 345 tonnes, the weakest first half since 2022. The second quarter was a sharp recovery from a weak start, not an uninterrupted acceleration.

The direction is not universal. Russia has sold about 50 tonnes so far in 2026, taking its holdings to roughly 2,277 tonnes, and Turkey has sold about 85 tonnes — a reversal for a country that was among the largest buyers of 2022 and 2023, and one that Frank Giustra and others who forecast the post-2022 buying wave did not anticipate. Selling is part of what a reserve is for. A central bank that draws on its gold in a hard year is using the asset as intended.

The Same 612 Tonnes, Different Vaults

DNB holds approximately 612.4 tonnes of gold, worth €72.2 billion at the end of 2025. Its total did not change in the latest operation. Between March and August 2026, DNB rebalanced the geographical distribution of its reserve across the four places it keeps gold: its own vault at Zeist, the Bank of England in London, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank of Canada in Ottawa.

*Tonnes are derived by applying DNB’s published percentages to its 612.4-tonne holding, rounded to the nearest tonne; DNB itself reports the shift as “approximately 86 tonnes”, which is what the New York and Ottawa reductions sum to. DNB cited increasing geopolitical unrest, crisis preparedness, the spreading of risk and improved tradability as its reasons.

The 86 tonnes came out of roughly 313 tonnes held in North America — just over a quarter of it — and most of it never crossed the Atlantic. DNB sold approximately 59 tonnes in New York and bought the same weight of gold meeting current international trading standards in London. It shipped a further 27 tonnes or more from North America to its own vault at Zeist, and moved a comparable weight of market-standard gold already in the Netherlands to London.

DNB says that combining sales and purchases with physical transport spread the risks of a complex relocation while keeping it efficient and cost-conscious, avoided remelting bars that already met the standard, and gave it experience of both approaches in case one proves impossible in a future crisis. That last point is the tell. For a reserve meant to be used in an emergency, quantity is one variable among several:

• Where the bars sit.
• What form they take, and whether it is the form the market trades.
• How quickly they can be sold, swapped or lent.
• Whether they can be reached under stress.
• What happens if one vault or one shipping route is closed.

DNB’s statement addresses each of those directly. That is why the move is about more than geography: it is about resilience and optionality.

What London Offers a Reserve Manager

The choice of London is not arbitrary. The Bank of England describes London as the global centre for gold trading, and says it provides gold custody to other central banks precisely to give them access to the liquidity of that market. Its vaults hold around 400,000 bars, worth more than £200 billion. Gold stored there for central banks is held on an allocated basis: in the Bank’s own words, the customer retains title to specific gold bars in its vaults rather than a claim on the Bank for a certain weight of gold. The Bank accepts only bars that meet London Good Delivery standards — the specification of weight, purity, dimensions and refiner accreditation that lets a bar change hands in the wholesale market without being re-assayed. We explained the allocated-versus-unallocated distinction from an individual’s perspective in our guide to storing physical gold; it is the same distinction at sovereign scale.

That standardisation matters. In the World Gold Council’s 2025 survey of reserve managers, 88% of respondents said they held their gold as London Good Delivery bars, and the 2026 survey — 76 central banks, the most in its nine-year history, polled between February 5 and May 19 — again put the Bank of England first among vaulting locations. The survey is produced by the Council’s research team under Juan Carlos Artigas; its senior market strategist, John Reade, has argued for years that official-sector demand has changed the structure of the gold market. The Council is funded by gold producers, and its survey is used here for what reserve managers reported, not for any view of price.

57% of surveyed central banks vault gold at the Bank of England — more than name any other location. Domestic storage came second, at 49%; many reserve managers use both. World Gold Council, Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey 2026 (June 16, 2026), 76 respondents.

The move puts more of DNB’s reserve into the form and location built for the world’s main wholesale physical gold market — the loco-London market from which the spot price itself is derived. In a crisis, a bar that can be sold, swapped or lent the same day is worth more to a reserve manager than an equivalent weight that must first be re-assayed, remelted or shipped. The plumbing behind all this — vaulting, clearing, refiner accreditation — is the subject of the LBMA/LPPM Global Precious Metals Conference, typically held in October.

Four Vaults, No Single Point of Failure

DNB describes the result as more balanced: four locations, none holding more than a third. London is the largest at 32.1%; the Netherlands keeps 30.8%; New York and Ottawa hold 18.5% each, so 37% of the reserve is still in North America. That changes how the story should be read.

Ottawa Has Held Europe’s Gold Before

During the Second World War, Canada became a major safe-storage location for sovereign gold. A review commissioned by the Bank of Canada and written by the historian Duncan McDowall records that between the first rumblings of war in 1938 and peace in 1945, foreign central banks deposited 2,586 tonnes of gold in Ottawa for safekeeping — among them the central banks of Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Norway and Poland. The Bank of England earmarked gold there too, and in 1940 made plans for a “shadow” Bank of England in Ottawa that could draw on Britain’s Canadian cache. For nations that had fallen under German occupation, the Bank of Canada’s summary of the report says, “this cache of safe gold was the ultimate guarantee of national survival”.

~2,586 tonnes of foreign central-bank gold placed in Ottawa for safekeeping between 1938 and the end of the Second World War. Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Norway and Poland were among the depositors. Duncan McDowall, “Due Diligence: A Report on the Bank of Canada’s Handling of Foreign Gold during World War II”, Bank of Canada, November 1997.

DNB has not linked its decision to its wartime experience, and we do not claim it did. The three objectives it names, though, are the same ones the 1938–45 record illustrates. Gold outside a country’s borders protects the reserve if the home country becomes inaccessible. Gold at home reduces dependence on foreign jurisdictions. Gold in London maximises access to the physical market. Those objectives conflict, and a four-location reserve is one way of holding all three at once.

Other Central Banks Are Also Rethinking Where Gold Is Held

The Netherlands is not an isolated case. China itself is reported — on unnamed sources, with no volumes and no official comment — to be vaulting more of its metal in Hong Kong. And the World Gold Council’s 2026 survey recorded more central banks changing their custody arrangements: the share that had increased domestic storage in the previous 12 months rose from 5% to 9%, and the share that had diversified its overseas storage locations rose from 2% to 10%. A further 7% planned to increase domestic storage and 9% planned more overseas diversification.

France is a second recent example, for a different reason. Between July 2025 and January 2026 the Banque de France replaced 129 tonnes held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — about 5% of its holdings — that did not meet the LBMA standard it wanted. Rather than ship and remelt the bars, it sold them in New York over 26 transactions and bought replacement bullion of the required standard in Europe, now stored in Paris. France’s holdings were unchanged at approximately 2,437 tonnes, and all of it now sits in Paris. The Banque de France described the operation as the continuation of a standardisation programme it has run since 2005, not a move away from US custody, and it booked a sizeable capital gain on the older bars in its 2025 accounts. It still makes the larger point: location and bar specification affect how useful a sovereign gold reserve is.

Germany is a counterexample. At the end of 2025 the Bundesbank held approximately 1,710 tonnes in Frankfurt, 1,236 tonnes in New York and 404 tonnes in London — roughly half its gold abroad, even after the programme that brought 674 tonnes home from Paris and New York between 2013 and 2017. There is no universal rule that reserve gold belongs at home. The pattern is diversification of custody.

South Korea shows a third route. A US regulatory filing for the end of June 2026, reported on August 13, showed the Bank of Korea holding 679,765 shares of the SPDR Gold Trust worth about $250 million — its first gold investment since it bought 20 tonnes of bullion in 2013, and at recent prices the equivalent of roughly 2 tonnes, held through a physically backed exchange-traded fund. The bank has also said it will set up a framework to buy domestically refined gold, its first such move in almost six decades, to diversify its purchase sources and gradually raise gold’s share of its reserves.

The method is the interesting part. Central-bank gold reserves do not have to consist of identical bars sitting motionless in domestic vaults. A reserve manager can approach gold through different structures depending on the objective: an ETF for speed and size, refined domestic metal for sovereignty, London bars for tradability. Each structure carries a different set of risks, which is the subject of the next section.

Sovereign gold on the move — custody decisions across a century

• 1938–45 Ottawa becomes a wartime safe haven: Foreign central banks, including the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Norway and Poland, place roughly 2,586 tonnes with the Bank of Canada.
• 2013–17 Germany brings 674 tonnes home: The Bundesbank moves gold from Paris and New York to Frankfurt, yet keeps more than a third of its reserve in New York.
• 2022 Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves are frozen: Roughly $300 billion of sovereign reserves immobilised by sanctions; central-bank gold buying doubles to more than 1,000 tonnes a year.
• 2024–25 Poland becomes the world’s largest official buyer: Two consecutive years as the top buyer, with a public target for gold’s share of reserves.
• Jul 2025 – Jan 2026 France replaces 129 tonnes of New York gold: Older-standard bars sold in New York; LBMA-standard replacements bought in Europe and vaulted in Paris. Total unchanged.
• Mar – Aug 2026 The Netherlands rebalances across four vaults: The economic equivalent of 86 tonnes shifts from New York and Ottawa toward London; London becomes the largest location at 32.1%.

The Risks That Appear Once Gold Is Stored

Gold is often described as an asset with no counterparty risk, and there is considerable truth in that. A physical ounce does not depend on a company generating enough cash to repay a bond. There is no gold issuer that must remain solvent, and no government that must make an interest payment for the metal to go on existing. Once gold is stored, traded or owned through an intermediary, other risks appear:

• Custody risk — who actually possesses the metal?
• Jurisdictional risk — which country’s courts and sanctions regime govern access to it?
• Access risk — could the asset become temporarily difficult to mobilise?
• Operational risk — can the bars actually be moved or traded when required?
• Counterparty risk — do you own specific metal, or a contractual claim against someone who does?

That is why the Bank of England’s distinction between allocated custody and a claim on the bank matters, and why Andy Schectman and others who focus on the plumbing of physical ownership keep returning to it. Gold itself may carry no issuer credit risk. The structure through which it is owned can.

What Does This Mean for Individual Investors?

Individual investors are not central banks. Their liquidity needs, security concerns, transaction sizes, tax positions and objectives are very different, and DNB’s statement is not an instruction to keep gold in four countries or to distrust custodians. The questions it answered apply to a private holding all the same: what exactly is owned, where it is, and who else stands between the owner and the metal. Egon von Greyerz takes the sovereign logic to its retail conclusion — allocated, segregated storage outside the banking system, in a jurisdiction you chose — and argues that even an allocated account at a commercial bank still leaves you exposed to the bank. You do not have to go that far to see why the question matters.

Physical bullion held directly provides very different exposure from an unallocated account; allocated vaulted bullion is different again. A physically backed ETF offers daily liquidity and convenience but places a financial structure and several intermediaries between the investor and the metal — we compared the two in physical gold versus gold ETFs. Mining shares provide exposure to the gold price and add corporate, operating, financial and jurisdictional risk. For an investor building a strategic precious-metals allocation, understanding those distinctions can be as important as deciding what percentage of a portfolio to allocate in the first place — the question our core-allocation guide and the portfolio builder are designed to help with.

The Bigger Picture

The story unfolding in 2026 is larger than China buying another 20 tonnes or the Netherlands shifting 86 tonnes between vaults. The World Gold Council’s latest central-bank survey found that 89% of responding reserve managers expect global central-bank gold holdings to increase over the next 12 months, while a record 45% expect their own institutions to add to theirs. On the Council’s demand data, central banks have accumulated roughly 1,000 tonnes a year on average over the past four years, about double the pace of the preceding decade — the series our bond-trap analysis treats as one of its four warning signs, and the demand base Lyn Alden argued in 2023 would prove durable rather than cyclical.

In view of increasing geopolitical unrest, DNB is strengthening its crisis preparedness. A more balanced distribution of these reserves between North America, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands helps to spread risks and will make them more readily available for use in a crisis situation.

De Nederlandsche Bank, press release, September 2, 2026

Meanwhile, reserve managers are reconsidering not only how much gold they hold but how it is held. China is accumulating. Poland is accumulating. The Czech National Bank has been accumulating for 41 months without a break. South Korea is returning to gold. France has upgraded and relocated part of its reserve. The Netherlands has deliberately redistributed bullion across four jurisdictions while increasing the amount immediately accessible to the London market.

These decisions do not share a single motivation, and they do not prove that the US dollar is about to lose its reserve-currency role — a question we took up separately in US debt, the dollar and gold. What they show is that gold is increasingly treated as an active component of sovereign risk management rather than a relic sitting untouched in a vault. For central banks, gold offers something unusual: an internationally recognised reserve asset without the credit risk of an issuing government or corporation. The Dutch experience adds a second lesson. Even when the asset itself has no issuer, where it is held, how it is held and how easily it can be accessed still matter. In a period of rising geopolitical uncertainty, central banks appear determined to preserve not just their gold but their options.

Central banks are treating custody as a decision rather than a default. Where the bars sit is checkable. What the gold price does next is not — and nothing in the reserve data settles it.

Sources and Methodology

Monthly and year-to-date purchase figures come from the World Gold Council’s central-bank statistics published on September 3, 2026, which compile what central banks report to the IMF and in their own releases through the end of July 2026; they lag, are revised, and omit buyers that do not report. The annual totals in the column chart are the Council’s current estimates from its Full Year 2025 report; it first reported 2022 as 1,136 tonnes and 2024 as 1,045 tonnes, and has since revised them to 1,080 and 1,092. The World Gold Council is an industry body funded by gold-mining companies; its data are widely used, and the funding context should still be understood. The Dutch figures are DNB’s own; the tonne equivalents in the location table are our derivation from DNB’s percentages and its 612.4-tonne holding. China’s ounce figures are from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange and converted at 32,150.7 troy ounces per tonne. The Bundesbank and Banque de France figures are from those institutions. The wartime Ottawa figure is from the Bank of Canada’s commissioned 1997 history of its wartime gold operations. Of the commentators linked above, Andy Schectman runs a bullion dealer and Egon von Greyerz runs a vaulting business; both have a commercial interest in physical ownership. Juan Carlos Artigas and John Reade are employed by the World Gold Council.

Primary sources

• De Nederlandsche Bank — “DNB improves tradability of gold reserves”, press release, September 2, 2026: the 86-tonne redistribution, the before-and-after location shares, the 59-tonne sale and 27-tonne transfer, and the crisis-preparedness rationale
• World Gold Council — “Central bank gold statistics: Central banks make positive headlines on gold” (Marissa Salim), September 3, 2026, data through July 31: purchases and sales by China, Poland, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Czech Republic, Malaysia, Bolivia, Russia and Turkey
• World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends: Q4 and Full Year 2025, January 29, 2026, central-banks section, Chart 12: annual net central-bank purchases for 2021–2025 (450, 1,080, 1,051, 1,092 and 863 tonnes) and the 473-tonne 2010–2021 average
• World Gold Council — Gold Demand Trends Q2 2026, central-banks section and press release “Gold market shows resilience as price momentum cools in Q2”: net official-sector purchases of 289 tonnes, the revised 57-tonne first quarter and the 345-tonne first half
• World Gold Council — Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey 2026 (fieldwork February 5 to May 19, 2026; published June 16, 2026): 76 respondents; expectations for reserves; vaulting locations; changes in custody arrangements. Central Bank Gold Reserves Survey 2025 for the Good Delivery bar preference
• State Administration of Foreign Exchange, China — Official Reserve Assets, monthly, 2026: gold reserves in fine troy ounces
• Bank of England — “Gold” (bankofengland.co.uk/gold): custody for central banks on an allocated basis, London Good Delivery bars only, and access to the liquidity of the London gold market
• Banque de France — 2025 annual results (February 2026) and accompanying statements: the sale of 129 tonnes in New York and their replacement with LBMA-standard bars stored in Paris
• Deutsche Bundesbank — gold reserves by storage location (Frankfurt, New York, London), end-2025
• Narodowy Bank Polski — press release of January 20, 2026 on the decision to raise gold reserves to 700 tonnes, and monthly reserve-asset releases (640.2 tonnes at end-July 2026)
• Bank of Korea — US Securities and Exchange Commission Form 13F for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 (679,765 SPDR Gold Trust shares), as reported by The Korea Times and Seoul Economic Daily, August 13, 2026
• Bank of Canada — Duncan McDowall, “Due Diligence: A Report on the Bank of Canada’s Handling of Foreign Gold during World War II” (November 1997), and the Bank’s release announcing it: foreign central-bank gold held in Ottawa, 1938–1945