PARAMOUNT MATTERGold at $5,000 and Nobody Is Looking
Record gold prices in 2025 and early 2026. Central banks buying about twice as much as before 2022. Few major discoveries. Exploration budgets below their 2022 level.
When this article was first published, gold was trading near US$5,175 per ounce. That was more than 11 times its 2005 average of roughly $450, not adjusted for inflation, and close to the record of about $5,600 set in late January 2026.1 A signal that strong, with the annual average price higher in every year since 2016 and almost doubling from 2022 to 2025, might have been expected to keep exploration budgets rising with it.
Until 2022 it broadly did. Budgets fell in 2019 and were flat in 2020, then rose sharply in 2021 and 2022. Since 2022 they have not kept pace.
Gold exploration budgets more than doubled from $3.3 billion in 2016 to about $6.9 billion in 2022, then fell to $5.55 billion in 2024.2,3 In 2025, when the average gold price was 44% above the year before,4 they recovered 11% to $6.15 billion,5 which is still 11% below the 2022 peak. Just over half of that, 51%, went to existing minesites.5 Major new discoveries remain scarce.6
After 2022 the price kept climbing. Budgets did not.
Annual average gold price and global gold exploration budgets, 2016 to 2025. The 2016 budget was the lowest since 2006.
View as table
| Year | Gold price, US$ per ounce | Gold exploration budgets, US$ billion |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 1,251 | 3.3 |
| 2017 | 1,257 | 4.05 |
| 2018 | 1,268 | 4.85 |
| 2019 | 1,393 | 4.29 |
| 2020 | 1,770 | 4.3 |
| 2021 | 1,799 | 6.2 |
| 2022 | 1,800 | 6.92 |
| 2023 | 1,941 | 5.92 |
| 2024 | 2,386 | 5.55 |
| 2025 | 3,431 | 6.15 |
This is the gold paradox: since 2022 the price has almost doubled and budgets have not followed.
The price signal
Gold set 53 new all-time highs in 2025, and the World Gold Council puts the year’s average price at about $3,431 per ounce, 44% above the 2024 average.4 The price set further records in January 2026.
In early 2026 two large banks were forecasting higher prices. Goldman Sachs had a year-end 2026 target of $5,400 and J.P. Morgan $6,300, though forecasts varied widely.8
Central bank purchases rose in 2022, the year Russia’s reserves were frozen, to more than twice their earlier average, and at 863 tonnes in 2025 remain well above it.4,9
Central bank buying, before 2022 and since
Net purchases of gold by central banks, tonnes a year.
View as table
| Period | Tonnes |
|---|---|
| 2010 to 2021, yearly average | 473 |
| 2022 | 1,082 |
| 2023 | 1,051 |
| 2024 | 1,092 |
| 2025 | 863 |
Two longer trends form the background. The US dollar’s share of global foreign exchange reserves declined from 72% in 2001 to 58% in 2024.10 Total global debt, public and private, stood at just above 235% of world GDP in 2024, and US federal debt was above $38.5 trillion in February 2026.11
Since 2022 central banks have bought about twice as much gold a year as they did from 2010 to 2021.
The exploration response that stalled after 2022
Set against that, gold exploration budgets reached a cyclical high in 2022 and in 2025 were still 11% below it.
Gold budgets rose 11% in 2025 from the year before, and gold’s share of all budgets rose to about half.5,12 Strong cash flows at major producers paid for most of the increase: majors raised their budgets 15% and accounted for 57% of the total.5,12
The 11% rise overstates the search for new deposits, because exploration budgets do three different jobs.
S&P Global divides exploration budgets into three stages. Grassroots, or greenfield, exploration is the search for new deposits in new areas. It is high risk, and it is the only stage that finds deposits in new districts. Late-stage work evaluates discoveries that may become development projects. Minesite, or brownfield, exploration extends known deposits at existing operations. All three add value. Only the first refills the pipeline from the top.
Across all metals, minesite work now takes the largest share of budgets: 45% in 2025.
Where exploration budgets went
Share of global exploration budgets for non-ferrous metals, by stage.
View as table
| Year | Grassroots | Late-stage | Minesite |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 24% | 35% | 41% |
| 2022 | 25% | 36% | 38% |
| 2025 | 21% | 34% | 45% |
Across all metals, grassroots exploration accounted for about half of budgets in the late 1990s. By 2024 its share had fallen to 22%,14 and in 2025 it slipped again to 21%, while minesite work took 45%.15 Total budgets rose from $8.3 billion in 2020 to a post-pandemic peak of $13.1 billion in 2022, with the grassroots share steady at about a quarter.12,13 The shift came after 2022, when grassroots budgets fell by about a fifth and minesite budgets rose. Among major companies, the minesite share has risen sharply in Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific and Southeast Asia.16
The shift to existing minesites, by region
Share of major companies’ exploration spending at existing minesites, 2010 and 2024.
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| Region | 2010 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Pacific and Southeast Asia | 27.3% | 76.8% |
| Africa | 42.5% | 65.4% |
| Latin America | 27.1% | 63.0% |
The discovery record points the same way. S&P Global’s 2026 review counts only nine major gold discoveries since 2020, totalling about 38 million ounces. S&P puts the average size of those made since 2020 at 4.3 million ounces, against 7.3 million ounces for those made in the 2010s, and none of the discoveries of the past ten years ranks among the 30 largest ever made.6 The same review counts 258 initial resource announcements from 2020 to 2025, containing 189 million ounces in all; 115 of the announcements, or 45%, were on greenfield ground.6 Counts like these depend on the size threshold a database uses, and recent discoveries usually grow with further drilling, so the latest period is understated.
Gold in major discoveries, by period of discovery
Million ounces in reserves, resources and past production.
View as table
| Discovered | Million ounces |
|---|---|
| 1990 to 1995 | 1,300 |
| 2000 to 2005 | 496 |
| 2020 to 2025 | 38 |
S&P counted 1,235 companies exploring for gold in 2024, 8% fewer than a year earlier.2
The long lag to supply
Less discovery now means fewer new mines later. Almost all gold produced today comes from deposits found years or decades ago.
S&P Global puts the average time from discovery to production at almost 18 years for mines that opened in 2020 to 2023, up from 12.7 years for those that opened in 2005 to 2009.17 The study covers gold, copper, nickel and lithium mines, and a 2026 update puts the average across 232 mines and projects, some counted to their expected start dates, at about 16 years. These are industry averages and not a forecast for any single project. They do suggest that a discovery made today is, on typical timelines, well over a decade from production.
Existing mines face pressure too. As the easier ounces are mined out, operations tend to move to lower grades and greater depths, which tends to raise the cost of each ounce.
Mine production reached a record 3,672 tonnes in 2025, up from about 2,520 tonnes in 2005 on GFMS and World Gold Council figures.4 That is growth of about 2% a year over two decades.
What the numbers say
Central banks bought between 863 and 1,092 tonnes a year from 2022 to 2025. Holdings in gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs) reached a record 4,025 tonnes in 2025, after net inflows of 801 tonnes. Together the two took in 1,664 tonnes in 2025, equal to 45% of mine production. Technology demand was about 323 tonnes in 2025.4,9
This is an argument about exploration, not a price forecast. Recycled gold is part of supply, and a thin discovery pipeline does not by itself determine the future price. What the data do show is that central banks and funds have bought more gold, while S&P finds few major discoveries since 2020, and smaller ones than in the 2010s.
In early 2026 the price signal was the loudest it had ever been. One question follows.
Why, with gold at $5,000, did so little of the money go to new ground?
Next in the series · Part 2Why the Money Stopped Flowing Underground →References
- “What Was the Highest Price for Gold?” Investing News Network, updated February 2026.↩
- “CES 2024: Gold exploration budgets down on value-oriented strategies,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 20 November 2024.↩
- “CES 2023: Monetary tightening weighs down exploration activity,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 8 November 2023; “Gold exploration budgets 18% higher in 2018,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 27 November 2018; and other annual editions of Corporate Exploration Strategies and World Exploration Trends.Added in revision↩
- “Gold Demand Trends: Q4 and Full Year 2025,” World Gold Council, 29 January 2026.↩
- “Gold Exploration Recovers on Record Prices, But a Thinning Pipeline Poses Long-Term Risks,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 4 June 2026.Added in revision↩
- “Major gold discoveries remain scarce despite record prices,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 1 October 2026.Added in revision↩
- LBMA Gold Price PM, annual averages as reported in the LBMA Annual Precious Metals Forecast Survey, London Bullion Market Association.Added in revision↩
- Reuters reports on bank gold forecasts, 22 January 2026 (Goldman Sachs) and 2 February 2026 (J.P. Morgan).↩
- “Gold Demand Trends Full Year 2023,” World Gold Council, 31 January 2024; “Gold Demand Trends: Full Year 2024,” World Gold Council, 5 February 2025.Added in revision↩
- “Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER),” International Monetary Fund.↩
- US Department of the Treasury, Fiscal Data; International Monetary Fund, Global Debt Database, September 2025 update.↩
- “World Exploration Trends 2026: what the latest data says about budgets, risk appetite and the project pipeline,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 10 March 2026.Added in revision↩
- “CES 2022: Minesite exploration leads, boosted by juniors,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 1 December 2022; “Global exploration budget for metals jumps 35% year on year to $11.2 billion,” S&P Global, 18 October 2021.Added in revision↩
- “Budget allocated to grassroots exploration at all-time low,” Mining.com, reporting S&P Global Market Intelligence data.↩
- World Exploration Trends 2026, S&P Global Market Intelligence, March 2026 (full report).Added in revision↩
- “New study shows global mining is now a brownfield industry,” Mining.com, 22 January 2026.↩
- “Average lead time almost 18 years for mines started in 2020–23,” S&P Global Market Intelligence, 10 April 2024; 2026 update on permitting and lead times, S&P Global Market Intelligence, 8 July 2026.Added in revision↩