Dutch Central Bank Confirms 86-Tonne Gold Shift From US and Canada to London Since March

Since De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) disclosed Wednesday, September 2, that it spent five months quietly moving gold out of North America, the details of that shift are drawing attention from currency analysts and rival central banks watching where the world's reserve gold actually sits.

The numbers are specific. Between March and August, DNB moved 86 metric tons of gold to London out of the roughly 313 tons it held combined in New York and Ottawa. Before the move, New York held 31.3% of the Netherlands' gold and Ottawa held 19.7%. Both now sit at 18.5%. London's share jumped from 18.1% to 32.1%, making it the largest overseas storage location for Dutch gold, according to DNB and confirmed by Reuters-fed reporting picked up by the Associated Press, CNN, and Business Insider. The Netherlands keeps 30.8% of its gold at home.

DNB's total holding is 612.4 tons, valued at €72.2 billion, or roughly $83.6 billion, at the end of 2025.

"With this relocation, we have improved the tradability of our gold reserves," DNB governor Olaf Sleijpen said in a written statement. "We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness."

Most of the move never touched a cargo plane. DNB sold about 59 tons of gold in New York and bought replacement bullion in London. Separately, more than 27 tons were physically transferred from the US and Canada to the bank's heavily guarded vault on a military base near Zeist in the Netherlands, and a similar quantity moved from Zeist onward to London. DNB didn't detail how the bars crossed the Atlantic.

Why London, and why now

DNB's stated reasoning is liquidity. Gold held at the Bank of England is considered the world's most tradable, meeting modern international trading standards and giving DNB the fastest path to sell in an actual crisis. Gold in New York and Ottawa, the bank said, "cannot be utilized as quickly and directly."

Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, told The Guardian that central banks have been reshuffling reserves for roughly a decade, but added that "the current political context in the United States might also push certain central banks into favouring other storage locations." He said London's depth as a market lets central banks lend gold to other institutions more easily than New York does.

John Plassard, an analyst at Cite Gestion Private Bank, called the Dutch move "a fairly one-off" step for now, but warned to The Guardian that if other central banks follow, it could damage confidence in the United States as a custodian of foreign reserves.

A NATO member and G7-adjacent economy is pulling gold specifically out of American vaults, and an industry analyst is on record saying that pattern, if it spreads, could damage US confidence as a custodian of foreign reserves.

But the record doesn't show a stampede. Germany and Italy have both faced domestic political pressure to reconsider gold parked in New York, and neither has moved. The Bundesbank told German public broadcaster ARD back in January that "the New York Fed is and remains an important storage site for our gold." That's a direct, on-record rebuttal from the institution actually holding the largest non-Dutch foreign gold stash in question, and it undercuts any claim that European central banks are unified in walking away from US custody.

France moved first. Banque de France sold its remaining New York-held gold between July 2025 and January 2026 and bought replacement bullion in Europe, according to Business Insider. DNB frames its own move as spreading risk across three locations rather than repatriating everything home, which is a materially different decision than Germany or Italy pulling gold back to Frankfurt or Rome.

The bigger picture: everyone is buying

This is happening against a backdrop of aggressive central-bank gold buying generally. The World Gold Council reported central banks added a net 102 tons in the first half of 2026, with Poland the top buyer, followed by Uzbekistan, China, and Kazakhstan; Turkey was the top seller. Poland has now overtaken the Netherlands as the world's 10th-largest gold reserve holder, according to BullionVault, as Warsaw pushes toward holding a third of its reserves in gold.

Spot gold traded around $4,488 to $4,490 an ounce this week, according to the Epoch Times and BullionVault, after a 3.8% weekly slide reversed on shifting bets about whether the Federal Reserve raises rates again this year. New York Fed president John Williams argued the rise in long-term borrowing costs reflects "a strong US economy," not financial-conditions stress, a framing several ECB economists have pushed back on by attributing recent inflation almost entirely to energy costs rather than demand.

Singapore's central bank is scheduled to begin storing gold for foreign central banks and sovereign entities in October, according to Business Insider, a new vaulting option explicitly built to serve Asian trading hours. Whether that draws further reserves away from New York, or whether Germany's Bundesbank holds its line, will be the next real test of whether DNB's move was a one-off or the start of a pattern.