LBMA published its London vault holdings data for September 2026, recording 9,821 tonnes of gold in London vaults at the end of the month, a total that includes the Bank of England’s gold holdings alongside the commercial vaults. The figure is 1.96% above end-August, an increase of about 189 tonnes. LBMA expresses the total as approximately 785,690 gold bars, on an assumed standard bar weight of 12.5 kg. The series is published on the fifth business day of each month and records holdings on the last day of the previous month.
The commercial share of that total sits with the six custodians LBMA lists as offering vaulting in the Loco London market: HSBC, ICBC Standard Bank and JP Morgan as clearing members, and Brink’s, Malca-Amit and Loomis International (UK) Ltd as security carriers. LBMA notes that clearing members without their own vault operations hold metal through accounts with one of the other custodians. The 9,821 tonnes is reported as a single figure for metal held inside the M25, with no split by custodian, account type or owner, so the September increase cannot be assigned to an individual vault or to allocated as against unallocated holdings. The total includes large wholesale bars, kilo bars, small bars and coin, and excludes jewellery and private holdings with retailers, individuals and smaller vaults outside the London clearing system.
A holder of allocated metal in London identifies its own bars from the bar list issued by its custodian, which records each bar by serial number, refiner, gross weight and fineness. In the LBMA series those bars appear only as tonnage within the M25 total. LBMA states that clearing members with vaulting facilities physically check and weigh every bar new to the market against the Good Delivery standard, which places that check with the custodian receiving the metal rather than with LBMA.
LBMA values the September holdings at $1.3 trillion using the month-end LBMA Gold Price PM, an indicative valuation that moves with the fixing independently of the tonnage. Holdings by custodian and by owner are recorded by each vault operator and, for its custody accounts, by the Bank of England.