Austria Gold Reserves: The Austrian National Bank’s Gold
Austria’s gold reserves amount to around 280 tonnes and are held by the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB). The holdings have been unchanged since 2007. Around half is stored in Austria, the rest at the gold trading centres of London and Paris and in Switzerland.
How much gold does Austria have?
The OeNB states its holdings as around 280 tonnes, unchanged since 2007. This puts Austria just outside the top 20 in the World Gold Council ranking. Gold makes up around 75 per cent of Austria’s foreign reserves.
According to the OeNB, it does not sell gold because it serves as a safety instrument and not for short-term gains. It also does not sell gold to private individuals and refers them to the Austrian Mint (Münze Österreich).
Where is Austria’s gold stored?
According to the OeNB, around 139 tonnes are in Austria. About 90 tonnes, around 7,200 bars, are held by the OeNB itself; the rest is in the vaults of the Austrian Mint. Abroad, around 84 tonnes are stored in London, around 50 tonnes in Paris and around 7 tonnes in Switzerland.
The OeNB explains the distribution by concentration risk: a single storage site would be more vulnerable. At the trading centres of London, Paris and in Switzerland, gold can be deployed quickly in an emergency.
The repatriation to Austria
At the end of 2012, according to the OeNB, only 17 per cent of the gold was in Austria, 80 per cent in the United Kingdom and 3 per cent in Switzerland. With 280 tonnes, that was just under 48 tonnes at home and around 224 tonnes in London. In 2015 the national bank began bringing gold back from London. The aim was to store half of the holdings in Austria.
Originally, the roughly 140 tonnes remaining abroad were to be split between London and Switzerland. In 2018 the OeNB announced that it had brought 90 tonnes back to Austria, so around 140 tonnes were then held at home. Paris has since become one of the storage sites as well.
History: from 1938 to today
After the “Anschluss” in 1938, the German Reichsbank seized 78.2 tonnes of Austrian gold. After the Second World War, Austria received 50.1 tonnes back. During the years of economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s the reserves grew strongly, and in the 1980s they reached their peak at around 657 tonnes.
With the end of Bretton Woods in 1973, gold lost its role in backing the schilling. In the 1990s the holdings fell due to sales and because around 22 tonnes were transferred to the ECB. Since 2007 they have been constant at around 280 tonnes.
For comparison, the OeNB cites the holdings of other countries: around 8,133 tonnes in the United States, around 3,350 tonnes in Germany and around 2,452 tonnes in Italy. The Eurosystem as a whole holds around 10,808 tonnes.
How does the OeNB check its gold?
The OeNB checks bars by precise weighing, by ultrasound, which allows a look inside the bar, and by X-ray fluorescence to determine fineness. The bars meet the LBMA Good Delivery standard: at least 995 parts gold per 1,000, usually weighing around 12.5 kilograms and measuring about 25 by 7 by 3.5 centimetres.
According to the World Gold Council, which the OeNB cites, around 219,891 tonnes of gold had been mined worldwide by the end of 2025, about two thirds of it since 1950. Melted together, this would form a cube with sides of around 22 metres. Austria’s reserve is just over one-thousandth of that.
