Reviewed through 13 July 2026
In 2025, gold surpassed US Treasuries as a share of official reserves. That single line from the IMF COFER 2026Q1 brief restates the architecture of central bank balance sheets. The share of monetary gold in official reserves has risen from ten percent in January 2019 to over twenty-two percent by August 2025.
The composition of the move matters. About two-thirds of the increase in aggregate gold holdings reflects price appreciation. About one-third, roughly USD 1.1 trillion in value terms, was active central bank buying, with volume up roughly thirty-six percent. Emerging market central banks did most of the buying.
USD 1.1tn
in active central bank gold buying since 2019
Volume up ~36%. Emerging market central banks led.
Who is buying, and why
Poland continues to lead in 2026, with the National Bank of Poland adding sixty-four tonnes year-to-date through May, putting it on track for its 700-tonne target. The World Gold Council survey of seventy-three central banks, taken between February and May 2026, finds eighty-nine percent expect global official gold reserves to rise in the next twelve months. A record forty-five percent expect their own institution to add gold, up sharply from prior years.
The IMF Notes paper on gold published in June 2026 is explicit that gold is highly volatile and ill-suited to the liquidity tranche of reserves. It recommends explicit market-risk haircuts when assessing gold as a liquidity asset. The accumulation is a hedge against sanctions risk and concentration, not a substitute for short-dated dollar reserves.
Currency composition of allocated reserves, 2026Q1
ChartChart
Currency composition of allocated reserves, 2026Q1 (%)
EUR 20.03%, JPY 5.44%, GBP 4.4%, CNY 1.99%.
Source: IMF COFER Data Brief, 2026Q1.
Central banks are buying gold as a hedge against sanctions risk and concentration, not as a substitute for short-dated dollar reserves.
Where Vereles sees the work
The analogue at family-office scale is small but real. UBS 2026 finds average gold and precious-metals allocations planned to rise from two to three percent among rebalancers. The right way to think about that line is alongside cash and short-dated Treasuries, not as a return-seeking sleeve. The mandate should specify haircut, custody, and the rebalance band between gold as a hedge and gold as a position.
What a principal takes away.
- 01Gold surpassed US Treasuries in official reserves in 2025. Most of the gain is price; about a third is active buying.
- 0289% of central banks expect global gold reserves to rise over the next year. 45% expect their own institution to add.
- 03Gold belongs in the hedge sleeve, not the liquidity sleeve. Volatility and illiquidity demand an explicit haircut in the treasury policy.
- 04For family offices, the gold line is small in weight (2 to 3%) but should sit on the same reporting surface as cash.