How heavy is all the gold ever mined?

The number is the World Gold Council’s estimate of the above-ground stock: all the gold that has been mined and still exists, built from data by Metals Focus and Refinitiv GFMS. Because gold does not rust or break down, almost all of it is still around in one form or another, so the stock and the total ever mined are treated as the same thing. The WGC also says around two-thirds of it has been mined since 1950.

The WGC used to publish the total once a year. Its update of 18 August 2026 is quarterly and gives 222,600 tonnes for the end of June 2026, rounded to the nearest 100 t. The last year-end figure was 219,891 tonnes for the end of 2025, a number repeated in the WGC’s March 2026 article on whether the world is running out of gold. The mid-2026 total is about 2,700 t higher, which is more than half a year of mine output, so the quarterly figure is not directly comparable to the year-end ones.

At the end of June 2026, jewellery held the largest share, about 99,700 t (45%). Central banks held about 39,000 t (18%). Bars and coins came to about 47,800 t (21%) and gold held by ETFs to about 4,000 t (2%). The rest is “OTC and other”: about 10,000 t (4%) of gold traded over the counter as an investment, and 22,100 t (10%) of other gold, mostly in technology and other non-jewellery products, plus stocks that cannot be assigned to another category.

The shares barely move from year to year. The year-end tables used four groups: at the end of 2025 jewellery was 44%, bars and coins including ETFs 23%, central banks 18% and other 15%. At the end of 2021 jewellery was 46%, bars and coins 22% and central banks 17%, so central banks and investors have gained a point or two at jewellery’s expense.

Pure gold has a density of 19.3 g/cm³, or 19,300 kg per cubic metre. Dividing 222,600,000 kg by 19,300 gives about 11,530 m³, and the cube root of that is about 22.6 m (74 ft), the size the WGC gives for mid-2026. The end-2025 total of 219,891 t fills about 11,390 m³, a cube of about 22.5 m, which the WGC rounded to “around 22 metres”.

Because the cube grows with the cube root of the weight, adding thousands of tonnes changes it very little. The end-2021 total of 205,238 t makes a cube about 22.0 m on a side, only about 0.6 m smaller than the mid-2026 one.

Mines produced a record 3,672 t of gold in 2025, up 1% on 2024, according to the WGC. That matches the growth of the total, which rose by 3,626 t between the end of 2024 and the end of 2025.

There is more still in the ground. The WGC’s mid-2026 figures put reserves, the gold that can be mined profitably today, at about 61,000 t, and the US Geological Survey puts them at about 66,000 t. Wider resources are estimated at about 114,400 t. Reserves would last only about 17 years at the 2025 rate, but the WGC points out that reserve estimates have stayed stable for decades as lower-grade deposits become worth mining.