The Dutch central bank spent six months shipping, selling and rebuying gold, and the largest single pile of Dutch bullion now sits in the Bank of England, a long way from home.
Gold is the one heirloom a nation is expected to keep in the attic, and the attic keeps turning out to be in somebody else’s house. Central banks have spent the past two years moving bars between New York, Ottawa, London, Paris and Zeist, and the moves are routinely described as countries bringing their gold home. Our opinion, argued over eight points, is that repatriating gold is mostly sentiment. Bullion is worth most where a buyer will take it at once, which means London and New York, and a vault at home is a photo opportunity with a security bill. The case rests on what De Nederlandsche Bank and the Banque de France have said about their own reserves, the World Gold Council’s 2026 survey of central banks, and Goldman Sachs’s estimates of who is buying.
The Netherlands now keeps more of its gold in London than in the Netherlands
De Nederlandsche Bank spent March to August 2026 thinning its holdings in New York and Ottawa, and when it announced the result the national reserve had been turned inside out. The World Gold Council’s figures show London’s share of Dutch gold rising from 18.1% to 32.1%, just ahead of the 30.8% kept at home in Zeist. That makes the Bank of England the largest single store of Dutch bullion. DNB’s reasoning is admirably unsentimental. It describes London as a major trading centre for physical gold, regards metal held with the Bank of England as the most readily available in a crisis, and says its bars in New York and Ottawa cannot be used as quickly or as directly. A central bank does not say that kind of thing about its own reserves lightly. The Netherlands now keeps its bullion where the buyers are.
Most of the Dutch transfer was a sale in New York and a purchase in London
DNB moved about 86 tonnes out of a combined holding of roughly 313 tonnes in the United States and Canada, which CNBC describes as just over a quarter of it. Very little of that travelled the way the word “transfer” suggests. The bank sold about 59 tonnes in New York and bought gold in London that meets international market standards. More than 27 tonnes went physically from North America to Zeist, and a similar quantity of standard-compliant bars went from Zeist to London, which avoided any need to remelt them (a polite way of saying nobody had to melt anything down). DNB states that “The total size of the gold reserves has remained the same,” a line from its own announcement on the tradability of its reserves that deserves framing in every reserve manager’s office. The reserve is the same size. It is simply easier to sell. The more revealing detail is New York itself, where DNB found a buyer for those 59 tonnes without apparent difficulty. The metal is interchangeable, and the address is the asset.
Amsterdam was the destination last time, and London is the destination now
The World Gold Council points out that DNB has made this journey before in the opposite spirit. In 2014 it moved gold from New York to Amsterdam to raise the share held at home; in 2026 it moved gold from North America mostly to London to make the reserve more readily deployable. Twelve years separate a bank that wanted its gold nearby from a bank that wants its gold usable, and we think the second instinct is the wiser one. Fairness requires the other column of the ledger. DNB still keeps a large holding in Zeist, and it cited increasing geopolitical unrest alongside tradability, according to Fortune, which also reported Paul Donovan of UBS describing the move as out of the ordinary for a central bank. Nobody at DNB has called the 2014 homecoming a mistake. That conclusion is ours, and the well-stocked vault in Zeist shows the bank still likes some gold within reach. Converts rarely empty the old house entirely.
France sold its New York gold and booked a gain buying better bars for Paris
The Banque de France is the case repatriation enthusiasts like best, and on close reading it argues for the London standard with Paris as the postcode. Yahoo Finance reported that between July 2025 and January 2026 the bank sold 129 tonnes held at the New York Fed across 26 transactions and bought London Good Delivery bars to be stored in Paris. Central Banking reported that the bank booked about €11bn in 2025 from exchanging substandard gold for an identical amount of higher quality, disclosed in its annual report; other outlets count the gain differently, and the Banque de France’s own explanation of the mechanism is the one to wait for. The stated motive was technical. According to Fortune, the bank made no reference to geopolitics and wanted the purity of its holdings above 99.99%, which the American stock did not meet. The explanation reported at the time was that higher-standard gold trades on the European market, and that buying new gold was easier than refining the old. France brought gold home only after first making it London gold. The vault moved to Paris, but the standard stayed in London.
The bar every central bank wants is defined in London
The World Gold Council’s 2026 survey of central banks drew a record 76 responses, and its June press release carried comment from Shaokai Fan, the council’s global head of central banks. Its most useful finding is the dullest. When central banks buy and hold physical gold, the preferred form is the London Good Delivery bar, the same specification the French bought and the Dutch shipped. The Bank of England is also the most popular vaulting location among respondents, used by 57%, ahead of domestic storage. The share keeping at least part of their gold at home fell to 49%, from 59% the year before. That fall comes in the same twelve months that “bring the gold home” became a headline reflex. Reserve managers, it seems, read the headlines and then ignore them. A nation can store its gold wherever it likes, but when it wants to sell, it needs a bar that London will accept.
A growing share of central banks would prefer not to say where their gold is kept
The same survey asked central banks where they vault their gold, and 20% said they would “prefer not to respond”, up significantly from 8% the year before. The question sat in an anonymous survey, and the answer records discretion, which is not the same thing as concealment. Goldman Sachs ran its own survey in August and found that 12% of central banks declined to confirm where their gold is stored, against 10% a year earlier. These are two different exercises with two different numbers, and they should not be blended into one dramatic statistic. Both point the same way, and both seem to us perfectly reasonable. Old families have never published an inventory of the safe, and a central bank that keeps its gold in London has every reason to avoid announcing how much it might want back, or when. Silence about the vault is the oldest form of good custody.
Central banks are still buying, and the custody is drifting toward London
Goldman Sachs estimated that central banks bought 79 tonnes of gold in August, as reported by Reuters, which is more than four times the monthly average before 2022. China was the largest identifiable buyer, at an estimated 25 tonnes. The more telling detail concerns where the metal ended up. According to reports of the same Goldman estimates, central-bank holdings at the New York Fed fell by 40 tonnes in August while those at the Bank of England rose by 46. Those custody figures rest on a single report of a note that Goldman has not published, so they deserve some caution. They fit, all the same, with what the Dutch did on the record and what the World Gold Council’s respondents report. The buying is global, and the bars are settling in London. Reserve managers have strong views about holding gold and fewer about holding it at home.
Venezuela is the best objection, and a home vault would not have answered it
Every argument for London has to survive Caracas. In November 2018 Reuters and The Times reported that the Bank of England was holding up the Venezuelan central bank’s request to withdraw 14 tonnes of gold, with The Times citing unnamed sources on anti-money-laundering concerns and Reuters citing two sources on the difficulty of obtaining insurance. The dispute reached the English courts, and the Financial Times reported in August 2026 that the United Kingdom, which has declined since 2018 to recognise Venezuela’s government, was in effect blocking access to some 31 tonnes. That is a real risk, and nobody should wave it away: a foreign custodian can become a locked room for a government it does not recognise. The World Gold Council’s survey, which draws on the views of central banks, did not contact those under sanctions. We think the lesson concerns which custodian a bank chooses, and in how many places. Gold sitting at home under sanctions has no obvious buyer in London or New York either, and nothing on the record shows a domestic vault would have made Venezuela’s gold any easier to use. The Dutch answer is diversification. Ottawa still holds 18.5% of their reserve, and they have kept their own vault.
The obvious follow-up is whether a central bank should keep any gold at home at all, and the record says some, for the bad day and the national conscience. France keeps its upgraded bars in Paris, and the Dutch kept a substantial reserve in Zeist after their tour of the trading centres. The working reserve, the part a country might need to sell in a hurry, belongs in a market vault, in bars the market already recognises, held by a custodian whose government the bank intends to stay on terms with. Zeist keeps the heirloom, and London keeps the buyers.
