The US dollar's share of global foreign exchange reserves rose to 57.13% in the first quarter of 2026, up from 56.42% in the final quarter of 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund's latest Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) report. Roughly half of that gain did not come from central banks actively buying more dollar assets, but simply from the dollar appreciating against other currencies — and because COFER measures holdings in dollar terms, exchange-rate moves alone can lift the reported share even when underlying portfolios are left untouched.

Total global foreign exchange reserves dipped slightly to $13.10 trillion in Q1 2026, down from $13.15 trillion the prior quarter. The IMF itself was careful to frame the uptick as a valuation artifact rather than a strategic shift. COFER is compiled from quarterly, voluntary reporting and tracks the currency mix of allocated reserves, which is why the shares are typically read alongside currency-market moves rather than in isolation.

The longer-term record shows a sustained decline in the dollar's dominance. The currency commanded roughly 71% of global reserves around 1999 and 2000, while today that figure sits near 57% — a decline of about 14 percentage points over roughly 25 years. That peak coincided with the euro's debut in 1999, and the single currency has since consolidated its place as the principal alternative in reserve portfolios, albeit from a much smaller base.

Separately, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF) surveyed 90 central banks and sovereign institutions as of June 2026. A majority of respondents said they plan to reduce their dollar allocations over the coming decade, citing rising political risks as the primary driver. Reserve allocations matter beyond symbolism: they shape structural demand for a country's government bonds, and changes in that demand are widely watched as one gauge of long-term confidence in the issuing government.

Central bank gold purchases have remained elevated, and by 2025 gold had surpassed US Treasuries as the top reserve asset held by central banks globally. Gold carries no counterparty risk, cannot be sanctioned, and does not depend on the fiscal credibility of any single government. The salience of those properties was underscored in 2022, when Western sanctions immobilized roughly $300 billion of Russia's foreign exchange reserves held abroad.

No cryptocurrencies or digital tokens are included in official reserve figures. Despite years of industry arguments about Bitcoin's properties as a store of value or a neutral reserve asset, the institutions that actually manage sovereign reserves have not moved their allocations.

Among other currencies, the euro remains the second-largest reserve currency by a wide margin. China's renminbi, despite years of internationalization efforts — including its 2016 addition to the IMF's Special Drawing Rights basket — still holds a relatively small slice of the global total. Successive quarterly COFER releases will show whether the dollar's Q1 uptick persists once valuation effects are separated from actual allocation changes, and whether the decade-long rebalancing intentions flagged in the OMFIF survey begin to register in the reported data.