European central banks are again adjusting where they keep part of their gold reserves, with De Nederlandsche Bank, or DNB, confirming this week that it moved 86 tonnes of gold from the United States and Canada to London between March and August.
The gold was placed in the Bank of England. It formed part of the 313 tonnes that the Netherlands had stored across the US and Canada, with the batch valued at about €10 billion to €12 billion. DNB said the move was meant to address rising geopolitical tensions and to make sure the gold could be used quickly in a crisis. Dutch central bank chief Olaf Sleijpen said, 「We expect we will never need to use this gold, but we must strengthen our resilience and preparedness.」
France and Germany had already taken similar steps
The Netherlands is not the first European country to move gold away from the US.
Banque de France has already shifted part of its gold reserves out of New York and back to France between July 2025 and January 2026. Earlier than that, Germany’s Bundesbank completed a similar operation in stages before 2016, bringing back more than 216 tonnes in total. That included 111 tonnes from New York and 105 tonnes from Paris, in a process that took several years.
Goldman Sachs research analysts Lina Thomas and Daan Struyven said such operations have appeared repeatedly in history. During the Cold War, they noted, some European central banks did the opposite and moved gold to New York for storage.
Much of the transfer was done on paper, not by ship
The Dutch move did not mean all 86 tonnes were physically loaded and transported across the Atlantic.
About 59 tonnes were sold in New York while an equivalent amount was bought in London, completing the transfer on the books without moving the bars themselves. The amount that was physically transported was a little over 27 tonnes. That gold was first moved from the US and Canada to the Dutch town of Zeist, and then a similar amount was sent on to London.
Joseph Cavatoni, senior market strategist at the World Gold Council, told the BBC that matching trades in two locations is the most common method: 「Selling in London and buying in New York on the same day effectively completes a book transfer, without involving physical logistics.」
Only a small number of companies handle international gold transport. Nader Antar, executive vice president at Brink’s Global Services, told the BBC that demand from central bank clients has clearly increased in recent years. 「Geopolitical and economic uncertainty, along with gold’s increasingly important role as a strategic reserve asset, are the drivers behind this trend,」 he said.
Why London remains central
The choice of London points to liquidity as a key factor.
The Bank of England remains a major hub in the global gold trade, which means gold stored there can find buyers faster if a central bank needs to turn reserves into cash. The report said the institution, which has a 300-year history, holds about 400,000 gold bars in its underground vaults with a total value of more than £200 billion. It is also the most popular storage location in the World Gold Council’s industry survey.
At the same time, more central banks are diversifying storage locations to reduce concentration risk.
World Gold Council says the moves should not be read as panic
The World Gold Council cautioned against treating the recent wave of transfers as a simple signal that a crisis is imminent.
Cavatoni told the BBC that geopolitical and trade tensions are part of the calculation, but not at the top of the list in every case. Inflation and interest-rate levels also matter. 「I do not think there is any sense of impending doom,」 he said. 「What I see is that countries are getting better at managing and expanding reserve assets.」
Keeping gold at home also comes with a price. Thomas and Struyven at Goldman Sachs said domestic custody requires spending on physical security, audit infrastructure and insurance. For smaller central banks, those costs can weigh disproportionately. On that reading, the decision to move gold or leave it where it is is not simply about trust. It is also a cost-benefit calculation.
Gold demand rises as reserve managers reassess the dollar
The relocation of central-bank gold is only one part of a broader reserve-management shift.
According to the latest World Gold Council survey, 45% of 76 responding central banks plan to increase their gold holdings over the next year, the highest reading since the survey began in 2018. Another 74% said the US dollar’s share of global reserves will decline significantly over the next five years.
The report said global central banks added a net 863 tonnes of gold in 2025 alone. Over the past four years, annual net purchases averaged 1,000 tonnes, well above the 500-tonne average seen in the previous decade.
Gold prices were also presented as part of the same picture. The article said gold reached a record of about $5,394 in February 2026. Goldman Sachs expects the metal could still test $4,900 before year-end, about $300 above the August level.
Bitcoin enters the discussion, but central banks still prefer bullion
The report linked the trend to the long-running 「digital gold」 narrative around Bitcoin. As more countries show less willingness to leave reserve assets tied to a single currency system and a single country’s vault network, Bitcoin is being discussed within the same de-dollarization theme.
Still, the article said central banks continue to choose physical gold, which carries thousands of years of trust, rather than more volatile crypto assets. Whether this quiet reshuffling of reserve assets will eventually affect sovereign attitudes toward Bitcoin remains an open question raised by the original report.