Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel put gold at almost 25% of global central bank reserves in 2025, up from around 14% in 2023, in his keynote speech to the LBMA/LPPM Global Precious Metals Conference in Sorrento on 5 October 2026. The shares come from the IMF’s International Liquidity database, measure gold at market value and exclude holdings of the BIS and the IMF. Nagel attributes the increase mainly to the gold price and states that, with the price held at its 2023 level, the share would have fallen to 12%. Against higher government bond yields, which have restored some of the appeal of debt securities, Nagel sets credit-risk concerns from rising debt and continuing geopolitical risk, and concludes that central banks still have significant grounds to diversify further into gold.
Nagel suggests that financial sanctions have been an additional driver of central bank buying: securities and deposits held abroad can be frozen, and physical gold held at home sits outside that risk. IMF Note 2026/007, published in July 2026 by Istvan Mak and Etienne Vaccaro-Grange, which Nagel cites on gold’s independence from any issuer or counterparty, ties that protection to custody. In the note’s assessment, each move toward domestic vaults adds insulation from foreign legal or operational action and costs usability, until gold kept at home is close to illiquid when foreign currency is needed at short notice. The note’s haircut model treats a two-day sale as realistic for monetary-standard gold held at the Bank of England or in the London market, allows longer for gold in a central bank’s own vault, and recommends deducting 6–12% from the market value of gold counted toward liquidity.
The note’s definition of monetary gold covers bullion of at least 995 fineness held in allocated accounts and unallocated gold accounts with non-residents that give title to claim delivery, and the same two forms are open to a corporate treasury or family office buying bullion. An allocated account holds specific bars recorded by refiner, serial number, fineness and weight at a named vault. An unallocated account gives title to claim delivery from its provider, an obligation of the kind Nagel describes physical gold as free of. For a private holder, the trade-off the IMF describes for central banks runs through the choice of vault: the vault’s jurisdiction decides which authorities can act on the bars, and the vault’s position relative to the market where the bars would be sold or delivered decides how quickly that can happen.
The speech covers Nagel’s reading of IMF reserve data and contains no decision on the Bundesbank’s own gold holdings; the definition of monetary gold behind the shares is set by the IMF.