A New Poll Has A Bold Prediction For The Value Of Gold In 2026

If you have been looking for a way to expand your investment returns in recent years, you might have considered gold. While there is a caveat to buying gold in 2025, it did go up in value throughout the year. As of mid-December 2025, it was solidly on its way to its largest year-over-year value increase in more than four decades. With those kinds of gains already locked in, you may now be wondering if gold is again worth buying in 2026.

A new poll from Goldman Sachs says that you may want to add gold to your portfolio before the new year. The investment bank took a survey in mid-November 2025 of more than 900 institutional investor clients using the Goldman Sachs Marquee platform. Almost 70% of the people responding to the poll expect gold to exceed $4,500 per ounce by the end of 2026 (via CNBC). As of December 15, 2025, that amount of gold is trading for around $4,300, so that suggests the potential for a pretty sizable increase.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television in late November 2025, Daan Struyven, the co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, said the company's outlook for gold in 2026 matches its poll respondents' optimism. He predicted at least a 20% increase in the price of gold by the end of 2026, and that it could reach $4,900 per troy ounce in that time.

According to the Goldman Sachs poll, 36% of those surveyed predict that the price of gold will surpass $5,000 per ounce by the end of 2026. A slightly smaller portion believes gold will settle at between $4,500 and $5,000 per ounce by the time 2026 comes to an end. About 22% of poll participants expect that gold will be roughly stagnant during 2026 and finish out the year at between $4,000 and $4,500 per ounce. Only 5% see gold's per-ounce price dropping during the next year and settling at between $3,500 and $4,000. Even fewer — about 3% — predict it will fall below $3,500.

If the majority is correct, it would mean a continuation of gold hitting unprecedented milestones. This trend has made it difficult for people trying to predict market movements. Many of the predictions that market experts made at the end of 2024 for gold prices in 2025 were surpassed before the midpoint of the year, causing many researchers to adjust their predictions upward. Gold had never surpassed $4,000 per ounce until October 2025. In December 2016, gold was priced at about $1,150 per ounce. If it surpasses $4,500 per ounce by the end of 2026, as many predict it will, it would represent a nearly 300% increase in gold's price over roughly a decade. For comparison, the S&P 500 stock index has only climbed by roughly 236% from December 2015 to December 2025.

Investing in gold can help protect you during inflation. Its value has often maintained a higher level of stability at times when inflation has negatively impacted the buying power of paper money, but, at roughly 3%, inflation's effect has been fairly minimal for most of 2025. Given that's a considerable decrease from even a few years earlier, there may be other drivers for gold's recent surge in popularity.

Those who participated in the Goldman Sachs survey were asked to identify what they thought was the primary reason for rising gold prices. According to 38% of the poll respondents, the central banks buying high levels of gold is believed to be the main reason. Central banks bought far more gold than they've been selling in 2024 and 2025, likely due to increasing political instability and record worldwide debt.

Another 27% of the survey respondents listed more broad economic concerns as the primary reason they believe gold prices will likely continue to increase during 2026. Movements in the price of gold don't seem to mimic movements in the prices of stocks or bonds or fluctuations in currencies. So, gold can balance portfolios if other assets are experiencing wild swings in value. During times of investment market uncertainty, some people simply like the peace of mind of being able to see and touch their investment in physical gold, which may partially explain its current consistent increase in price.