Reserve-currency composition

How the world holds its reserves

The currency composition of the world’s allocated official foreign-exchange reserves, quarterly from Q1 1999 to Q1 2026, from the IMF’s COFER database. Shares are of the allocated portion of reserves (the part central banks report by currency). This view selects the US dollar, euro, yen, pound sterling and renminbi.

57.13%

USD US dollar

Q1 2026

20.03%

EUR Euro

Q1 2026

5.44%

JPY Japanese yen

Q1 2026

4.40%

GBP Pound sterling

Q1 2026

1.99%

CNY Chinese renminbi

Q1 2026

Data as of Q1 2026 (IMF COFER)

What this is. The five currencies shown sum to 88.99% of allocated reserves in Q1 2026, not 100%: the remaining 11.01% is other allocated currencies (the Australian and Canadian dollars, the Swiss franc, and IMF’s other-currencies category) outside this five-currency view, not unallocated reserves. Shares are of allocated reserves only. COFER individual-country submissions are confidential by design, so this page uses the published World aggregate. See the methodology for the exact query, the subset limitation, and the provisional-revision caveat on recent quarters.

Reserve-currency composition

Currency shares of allocated reserves, Q1 1999–present

Each line is a currency’s share of allocated reserves, in percent, across 109 quarters. The dollar sits far above every other currency; the euro is a distant second; the renminbi’s line begins in Q4 2016, when COFER first reported it separately (coincident with the renminbi’s October 2016 entry into the IMF’s SDR basket), not at zero before then.

US dollar USDEuro EURJapanese yen JPYPound sterling GBPChinese renminbi CNY

Hover for the share of allocated reserves in each currency

Source: IMF, Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) World aggregate (G001), allocated reserves (AFXRA), quarterly. Recent quarters (through Q1 2026) are provisional and revise as late reporters submit. Methodology

The dollar’s share, told by the data

The US dollar’s share of allocated reserves was 71.19% in Q1 1999, the start of COFER’s modern currency taxonomy. It is 57.13% in Q1 2026, a change of −14.06 pp over the span. Its highest reading was 72.13% (Q2 1999) and its lowest was 56.42% (Q4 2025). The decline is gradual and partial, not a collapse: the dollar remains, by a wide margin, the single largest reserve currency. Over the same window the euro moved from 18.12% (Q1 1999) to 20.03%, peaking at 24.18% (Q3 2009); the renminbi entered at 1.00% (Q4 2016), peaked at 2.85% (Q4 2021), and is 1.99% now.

Entry against latest

Share of allocated reserves, by currency

Percent, Q1 1999 against Q1 2026.

Excludes the Chinese renminbi, which COFER first reports separately in Q4 2016, so it has no Q1 1999 value to compare against. The table below carries every currency.

Source: IMF, Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) Methodology

Currency	First quarter	First share	Peak share	Latest share
USD US dollar	Q1 1999	71.19%	72.13% (Q2 1999)	57.13%
EUR Euro	Q1 1999	18.12%	24.18% (Q3 2009)	20.03%
JPY Japanese yen	Q1 1999	6.03%	7.05% (Q3 2000)	5.44%
GBP Pound sterling	Q1 1999	2.74%	5.66% (Q4 2007)	4.40%
CNY Chinese renminbi	Q4 2016	1.00%	2.85% (Q4 2021)	1.99%

Source: IMF, Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) First / peak / latest computed directly from the quarterly share series for each currency. The renminbi's later first quarter is a real reporting-history fact, not a data gap. Methodology

Related: the equity-valuation and stress read on financial conditions. See the full methodology for the COFER dimensions, the five-currency subset limitation, and the recent-quarter revision caveat.