Official Gold Reserves · 100+ Central Banks · Metric Tonnes

The Tonnes column is the most recently published official figure for each country — not an estimate. The Previous column shows the prior month's reported holding. When these two numbers differ, the Change column shows the net purchase (green) or sale (red) in tonnes. A dash means the figure was unchanged.

The % of World bar shows each country's share of the ~36,582 tonne global official stock, scaled against the US (the largest holder at 8,133 t = 100% of the bar). The Reference column is critical: it tells you which month's data is actually shown. Countries like Germany and France report quarterly; China and others sometimes go months without updating, then post step-changes. Always check the reference date before drawing conclusions about recent activity.

The freezing of Russia's roughly $300 billion in foreign exchange reserves in February 2022 was a watershed moment for global reserve management. It demonstrated that US Treasuries, euros, and other sovereign debt instruments held abroad can be rendered inaccessible through sanctions — something no central bank had seriously modelled before. Gold, held in domestic vaults, cannot be frozen by a foreign government.

The structural response was immediate: 2022 saw the highest central bank gold purchases since 1950, at over 1,100 tonnes net. That pace continued through 2023 and 2024. The buyers are overwhelmingly from the Global South and emerging markets — China, Poland, Singapore, Turkey, India, Kazakhstan — countries that are simultaneously reducing USD exposure and seeking assets outside the Western financial system's legal reach.

Most central bank gold is held in a handful of locations. The Bank of England vault in London is the world's largest custodian of foreign gold — dozens of countries store bars there because London is the LBMA's primary settlement hub and gold can be lent or sold on the wholesale market with minimal friction. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York (five floors below street level in Manhattan) holds gold for about 36 foreign governments and central banks. Swiss vaults, primarily in Berne and Zurich, are the third major hub — neutral jurisdiction, politically stable, and close to the LBMA's European counterparties.

The post-2014 repatriation trend — Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, and others moving bars home — reflects a desire for direct physical access rather than distrust of custodians. Domestically held gold is politically easier to account for and cannot be involved in legal disputes across jurisdictions. Hungary went from holding almost all of its gold in London to repatriating 100% to Budapest in 2018, citing "changing international trends."

Tonnes alone can be misleading — a country with 300 tonnes and $500 billion in total reserves is less "gold-committed" than one with 100 tonnes and only $50 billion in total reserves. The share of gold in total foreign exchange reserves is therefore a key metric for understanding strategic intent. The US holds gold at roughly 65–70% of its total reserves; Germany sits above 70%. These are outliers — most Western central banks inherited large gold positions from the Bretton Woods era and never sold.

At the other end, China's gold share sits around 4–5% despite being the sixth-largest holder in absolute tonnes — a reflection of its enormous total reserve base (over $3 trillion). This is why China's gold purchases, while substantial in tonnage, are often described as "catching up" rather than overweighting. For context, doubling China's gold share to 10% would require buying roughly 4,000 more tonnes at current prices — worth around $430 billion, or over a year of global mine supply.