The Dutch central bank says it has moved 86 tonnes of its gold reserves out of the United States and Canada and into London, in a shift it linked to growing geopolitical unrest.
According to AFP reporting carried by France 24, De Nederlandsche Bank said the transfer was designed to make the country’s bullion easier to deploy in a crisis. The bank said gold stored in London can be traded more easily than metal held in New York and Ottawa, and described the move as a way to improve the resilience and preparedness of the reserve system.
DNB president Olaf Sleijpen said the bank assumes it will never need to use the gold, but argued that it was still necessary to strengthen readiness. The bank said that having gold in London makes it “the quickest” to deploy in a crisis situation, reflecting the practical importance central banks place on location as well as on volume.
The shift changed the geographical split of the Dutch gold stock. DNB said the Netherlands still holds 30.8 percent of its reserves domestically, while the share in London rose to 32.1 percent after the transfer. Before the move, 31.3 percent of the gold was held in New York and 19.7 percent in Ottawa. After the transfer, those shares fell to 18.5 percent each.
The bank said the total Dutch gold stock stood at 612.4 tonnes and was valued at 72.2 billion euros at the end of 2025. It said the transfer took place between March and August this year. Part of the shift was carried out through buying and selling, while another part involved physically moving gold bars.
DNB said it moved more than 27 tonnes of physical gold from the United States and Canada back to Zeist, then moved the same quantity from Zeist to London. The bank said this approach reduced the need to melt down bars and spread the risks involved in physically shifting a large quantity of bullion.
The Dutch move fits a broader pattern of central banks rethinking reserve storage. AFP cited Laurent Schwartz, president of the Paris-based National Gold Counter, as saying central banks have been moving reserves around for about a decade. He said the current political context in the United States could also push some central banks toward other storage locations.
The London market remains attractive because it is the deepest and most liquid, he said, making it easier to use gold in times of stress. AFP also quoted analyst John Plassard as saying the Dutch move was intended to ensure more immediate availability in the event of a crisis.
The report noted that there have also been questions in Germany about the safety of gold reserves held in New York. For now, however, the Bundesbank has said it is not shifting those holdings away from the New York Fed.
The Dutch central bank’s decision does not signal an imminent use of the gold. It does, however, show how reserve managers are balancing security, liquidity and geopolitics in the choice of where to keep one of the world’s most closely watched assets.
The event date for this report is 2026-09-02.
