Record number of central banks plan to keep buying gold, WGC survey finds

The World Gold Council's annual Central Banks Gold Reserves Survey, conducted with YouGov between 5 February and 19 May 2026, drew responses from 76 central banks, a record participation rate up from 73 the previous year. Of those surveyed, 89% expected global central bank gold holdings to continue increasing over the following twelve months, and a record share of respondents said they personally planned to add to their own institution's gold reserves in the year ahead.

The survey identified an expanding roster of active buyers beyond the handful of large, well-known purchasers that had dominated headlines in earlier years. China and Kazakhstan remained consistent buyers, while Indonesia and Malaysia were identified as having newly turned into net purchasers, part of a broader trend of central banks in developing economies diversifying reserves away from the US dollar.

What sustained official demand means for gold's floor price

For gold miners across Africa, the survey's findings reinforced a theme that had run through the year's other central bank data releases: official-sector demand for gold had become structurally embedded across a widening group of countries, rather than concentrated in one or two large repeat buyers, reducing the risk that a policy shift by any single central bank could meaningfully undermine the demand floor supporting bullion prices.

A survey that captured a turning point

Because the survey period spanned gold's record-setting January rally and the early stages of its subsequent correction, the results offered an unusually clear view of how reserve managers' intentions held up even as the price itself became more volatile, suggesting the structural buying trend was not simply a reaction to a rising price but a longer-term shift in reserve management strategy.

Survey respondents cited concerns about currency debasement and geopolitical fragmentation as the leading reasons for adding to gold reserves, factors that showed little sign of abating through the rest of 2026 and that reserve managers said were likely to persist regardless of where the gold price itself settled.

Gold market strategists said the survey's findings, drawn from an unusually large and representative sample of reserve managers, offered some of the most credible forward-looking evidence available that official demand would remain a durable pillar of the market well beyond 2026.

Sources

• World Gold Council: Central banks set to step up gold buying over the next year, 25 Jun 2026

Photo: A central bank building; a record 76 reserve managers took part in the World Gold Council's 2026 survey. Raw stuff, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.