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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Poland is set to become the world’s tenth biggest holder of gold after its central bank, the National Bank of Poland (NBP), announced plans to increase its reserves to 700 tonnes.
The NBP currently holds 550 tonnes of gold, the 12th largest reserve among the world’s central banks. However, increasing that to 700 tonnes would, on current figures, move it ahead of the Netherlands (612.5 tonnes) and Turkey (641.3 tonnes).
“This will place Poland among the elite ten countries with the largest gold reserves in the world,” declared NBP governor Adam Glapiński in a press release on Tuesday announcing the plan to increase reserves to 700 tonnes.
Poland has been accelerating its gold accumulation in recent years. In 1996, the NBP held just 14 tonnes of gold. By 2016, the year Glapiński became the bank’s governor, that had risen to 102 tonnes. In the decade since then, the figure has grown more than fivefold.
According to data from the World Gold Council, an international trade association for the gold industry, in the first 11 months of last year, the NBP added more gold to its reserves (95 tonnes) than any other central bank globally.
In May last year, NBP announced that for the first time its gold reserves were larger than those of the European Central Bank (ECB).
The Polish central bank's gold reserves are now larger than those of the European Central Bank, its governor has announced.
“This shows the stability, abundance and solvency of the Polish economy,” says Adam Glapiński https://t.co/30uM9L6WrF
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) May 9, 2025
Last week, Glapiński had already signalled plans to increase the NBP’s gold reserves. He emphasised that gold is a strategic asset for the state’s security and said that selling it is “absolutely out of the question”, reported broadcaster TVN24.
Glapiński also warned that the rapid rise in gold prices will not last indefinitely and that a significant correction is possible. Regardless, he said, the central bank will continue accumulating reserves to ensure the country’s financial security in “exceptionally volatile times.”
According to Glapiński, the 550 tonnes of gold currently held by the bank are worth nearly 276 billion zloty (€65.3 billion). That meant that the metal accounted for around 28% of the value of the NBP’s total reserves at the end of 2025.
Last year, following decades of rapid growth, Poland’s GDP surpassed $1 trillion, thereby overtaking Switzerland to become the 20th largest national economy in the world.
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: Narodowy Bank Polski/Flickr (under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland’s economy and energy sector. She previously worked for Reuters.
