Countries With the Most Gold Reserves: Leaders, Surprises and Near-Misses

The countries with the most gold reserves are the United States (8,133.5 tonnes), Germany (3,350.3 tonnes) and Italy (2,451.8 tonnes), according to World Gold Council figures based on IMF data for mid-2026. France, China, Russia, Switzerland, India, Japan and Poland complete the top 10. The US holds more than Germany and Italy combined, and at December 2025 prices its gold was worth well over $1 trillion. Some countries you might expect near the top are much lower. Britain is 18th with 310.3 tonnes after selling half its gold between 1999 and 2002. Canada is not in the top 50 at all. Meanwhile Lebanon (286.3 tonnes) and Uzbekistan (431.7 tonnes) hold more gold than most large economies.

Fort Knox and the other expected leaders

The ranking counts official gold: the bullion that central banks and treasuries report to the International Monetary Fund. The World Gold Council uses that IMF data to rank countries. It does not include gold held by private people, jewellers or exchange-traded funds. It also does not show where the gold is actually stored, and central banks generally do not allow independent audits. With that in mind, here is the official top 10.

The United States’ lead goes back to the gold standard era. Much of its bullion is kept at the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The Treasury built it in 1936 to move gold away from coastal cities that could be attacked. The first shipments came from the New York Assay Office and the Philadelphia Mint between January and June 1937, on 39 trains with decoy trains and military escorts. That first wave moved 4,909 tonnes, 44.84% of the 10,947 tonnes the country held at the time. Fort Knox now holds 147.3 million troy ounces (4,580 tonnes), a little over half of the US total.

Germany, Italy and France, ranked two to four, are also expected. Each keeps more than 80% of its foreign reserves in gold. Germany is known for moving its gold home: between 2013 and 2017 the Bundesbank brought back 674 tonnes, 300 from New York and 374 from Paris, finishing three years ahead of schedule. Even so, in early 2026 about 37% of its gold (1,236 tonnes) was still at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and another 13% at the Bank of England. One holder is bigger than any of these three European countries but is not a country: the IMF itself has held 2,814 tonnes since 2011. And the euro area together, including the European Central Bank’s 508.4 tonnes, holds 10,808.3 tonnes, more than the United States.

China, Russia and India: the buyers who rose into the top 10

China, in fifth place, is less of a surprise than its figure suggests. For years it did not publish its holdings. On 17 July 2015 it announced its first figure in six years, a jump of about 57% from 1,054 to 1,658 tonnes, and it has since grown to 2,386.5 tonnes. Even so, gold makes up only 10.2% of China’s reserves, because it also holds very large amounts of foreign currency.

Russia, sixth with 2,283.8 tonnes, keeps 40.6% of its reserves in gold. Some of that gold sits in the National Wealth Fund as well as at the central bank. The fund held 405.7 tonnes when the war with Ukraine began, and only 173.1 tonnes were left by November 2025, when it started selling physical gold on the domestic market.

India’s 880.5 tonnes are in eighth place. During its 1991 balance-of-payments crisis, India had to fly 46.91 tonnes of gold to the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan as security for a $400 million emergency loan. Its reserves reached about 880 tonnes by late 2025. Between 2023 and 2026 the Reserve Bank of India brought about 274 tonnes home from European vaults, including a 100-tonne airlift from London in May 2024, so that roughly 77% now sits in Mumbai and Nagpur. Japan, in ninth place, is the opposite case: its 845.9 tonnes are only 9.1% of its reserves, the lowest share in the top 10.

Poland, the surprise at number 10

Few people would guess that Poland holds more gold than the Netherlands or Britain. The National Bank of Poland bought heavily between 2018 and 2025, taking its holdings past 400 tonnes and then on to 640.6 tonnes. Between July and November 2019 it also brought back 100 tonnes from the Bank of England: 8,000 bars of 12.5 kilograms each, worth about $4.7 billion, flown to Poland in eight night operations. Much of that gold had been in London for decades. In September 1939 Polish officials took the country’s whole 80-tonne reserve out ahead of the German invasion, through Romania, Turkey, Africa and France, and after the war it was split between Ottawa, New York and London.

Lebanon, Uzbekistan and Portugal: small economies with large hoards

Several countries rank well above what the size of their economies would suggest. Uzbekistan is 13th with 431.7 tonnes, and gold makes up 87.4% of its reserves. It is a gold producer in its own right, and gold is its biggest source of foreign currency. Next door, Kazakhstan is 16th with 368.6 tonnes (77.7%). Portugal is 15th with 382.4 tonnes, more than Spain (281.0 tonnes) or Saudi Arabia (323.3 tonnes). Gold is 79.9% of Portugal’s reserves, whereas for oil-rich Saudi Arabia it is just 10.7%.

Lebanon is the most striking case. It has a population of only a few million and has been through a long financial crisis, yet it ranks 19th with 286.3 tonnes. Gold makes up 82.1% of its reserves, a share close to Germany’s. That is more gold than Spain, Austria or Belgium. Lebanon’s tonnage even sits just below the United Kingdom’s.

The Netherlands and Turkey, just outside the top 10

The two closest near-misses are both large holders. The Netherlands is 11th with 612.5 tonnes, only about 28 tonnes behind Poland, with gold making up 74.2% of its reserves. De Nederlandsche Bank has been moving its gold as well. Between March and August 2026 it transferred about 86 tonnes from the United States and Canada to London. After the move, 32.1% of its reserve was in London and 18.5% each in New York and Ottawa, while the total stayed at 612.4 tonnes. Turkey is 12th with 530.6 tonnes, 56.3% of its reserves.

Switzerland, seventh with 1,039.9 tonnes, came close to being forced to hold far more. The “Save our Swiss Gold” initiative would have required the Swiss National Bank to keep at least 20% of its assets in gold, never sell any, and bring all of it back to Switzerland. Voters rejected it in a referendum on 30 November 2014.

Britain, Canada, Australia and South Africa: famous names that miss out

The United Kingdom’s place is the best-known near-miss, because it chose to sell. On 7 May 1999 the Treasury announced it would sell gold, when the price was $282.40 an ounce, and the announcement alone pushed the price down. Between July 1999 and March 2002 it sold about 395 tonnes, roughly half its reserve, in 17 auctions at an average of about $275 an ounce, raising about $3.5 billion. The price hit $252.80 on 20 July 1999, a low that came to be called “Brown’s Bottom”, after Chancellor Gordon Brown. The sale also led a group of central banks, including the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, to sign the Washington Agreement on Gold in September 1999, limiting their combined sales to 400 tonnes a year for five years. The agreement was renewed in 2004 and 2009. Britain now ranks 18th with 310.3 tonnes. The Bank of England still stores gold for other countries, including part of Germany’s.

Canada does not appear anywhere in the top 50, which ends with Cambodia at 54.4 tonnes. Norway made the same choice: in 2004 Norges Bank took gold out of its reserves and sold its bars in London, keeping just seven bars and some historic coins for museums.

The biggest surprise is that mining a lot of gold does not mean holding a lot. Australia, the world’s third-largest gold producer in 2024 at about 290 tonnes in US Geological Survey figures, holds just 79.8 tonnes and ranks 42nd. South Africa, where the Witwatersrand Gold Rush began in 1886 and which mined two-thirds of the world’s gold in 1970, still produced about 100 tonnes in 2024, yet holds only 125.5 tonnes and ranks 33rd. Our guide to where gold is mined explains why the big mining countries export most of what they dig. For South Africa, gold is one of many minerals, as our guide to the natural resources of South Africa shows. China, the largest producer, is the exception: it both mines and holds large amounts of gold.

To put these figures in context, the IMF counts 36,535.4 tonnes of official gold worldwide. The World Gold Council estimates that about 190,040 tonnes had been mined in all of history by 2019. So central banks hold less than a fifth of all the gold ever mined, and one country, the United States, holds more than a fifth of that official total.