Gold Price in the 2020s

The decade opened with a record: pandemic stimulus and collapsing real yields drove gold past $2,075 per ounce in August 2020, finally breaking the 2011 high. Then came a stall. Even as inflation surged to four-decade highs, aggressive Fed rate hikes held the 2021 and 2022 averages nearly flat at $1,799 and $1,800, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine providing only brief spikes. The turn came in 2023: a US regional banking crisis and record central bank buying lifted the average to $1,941.

From there the market went vertical. 2024 averaged $2,386 as gold broke $2,500 and the Fed began cutting rates, and 2025 averaged $3,432 as gold crossed $4,000 for the first time that October, with the LBMA fix setting 53 record highs during the year. In September 2025 gold also cleared its inflation-adjusted 1980 peak for the first time, as Bloomberg reported. The run climaxed in late January 2026 near $5,590, the current all-time high, before a correction through the first half of 2026. The decade is still being written; this page updates as each year closes.

Central banks are the defining buyer of the decade. Official-sector purchases have run at record levels since 2022, when the freezing of Russian reserve assets pushed many countries to hold more of their reserves in an asset with no counterparty. Layered on top: the post-pandemic inflation shock, ballooning US deficits, the Fed's 2024 to 2025 cutting cycle, and a chain of geopolitical crises from Ukraine to the Middle East.

The result already ranks among gold's great decades, though the 1970s remain unmatched in percentage terms: a roughly 753 percent rise from start to finish against 94 percent so far for the 2020s through 2025. Track every record on the gold all-time high page, or see how the current era compares in real terms on the inflation-adjusted gold price page.