Global gold demand hit quarterly record as investment keeps soaring

Gold continued its rally in the third quarter of 2025, living up to its reputation as a safe haven during times of turbulence.

The precious metal breached $4,000 an ounce for the first time in early October, pushing the price up more than 50% since the start of 2025.

In Q3, growth was driven primarily by investment demand, according to the World Gold Council's latest trends report.

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Investment demand accelerated in Q3 to reach 537 tonnes (+47% y/y), accounting for 55% of overall net gold demand.

"This momentum was driven by a powerful combination of an uncertain and volatile geopolitical environment, US dollar weakness and investor 'FOMO' as the price climbed higher."

Central banks also picked up the pace for this year, with net purchases totalling 220 tonnes in the third quarter -- up 28% on Q2 and 10% year-on-year, despite the record-high gold price.

On a year-to-date basis, this trailed behind the exceptional highs of the last three years, but was 'comfortably' above pre-2022 levels.

While the FOMO factor certainly played a role in the momentum pushing up the price of gold particularly in the past three weeks, comments the Council's Joe Cavatoni (senior market strategist for North America), under all of it is a fundamental case for portfolio resilience.

That along with central banks functional-shifting structurally, he says.

"While we're tracking at about three quarters of what we've seen in previous years, central banks still have healthy levels of consumption."

He notes that this is a 16-year trend and these levels are above historical levels, so there is still a lot more opportunity for central banks to continue to bring gold into their reserve portfolio.

Scroll up to the audio player to hear more from The World Gold Council's Joe Cavatoni