Dollar global reserve share fell to 56.92% in 2025 Q3, while total global foreign-exchange reserves rose to about $13.0 trillion, according to the IMF’s latest COFER release—signaling continued but incremental diversification by central banks.
What the IMF data shows
The International Monetary Fund’s Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data for the third quarter of 2025 shows the U.S. dollar’s share slipping to 56.92%, down from 57.08% in Q2. Over the same period, total global foreign-exchange reserves increased slightly to about $13.0 trillion from $12.94 trillion.
The euro’s share increased to 20.33% in Q3 from 20.24% in Q2, while the Chinese renminbi (RMB) share edged down to 1.93% from 1.99%. The IMF also reported that “other currencies” (everything outside the dollar, euro, and RMB) rose to 20.82% in Q3 from 20.69% in Q2, extending a multi-quarter diversification pattern.
| Currency bucket | 2025 Q2 share | 2025 Q3 share |
| U.S. dollar (USD) | 57.08% | 56.92% |
| Euro (EUR) | 20.24% | 20.33% |
| Chinese renminbi (CNY) | 1.99% | 1.93% |
| Other currencies | 20.69% | 20.82% |
| Total FX reserves | $12.94T | $13.0T |
Why the “drop” needs careful interpretation
In the IMF’s Q2 2025 COFER briefing, the Fund stressed that exchange-rate moves can significantly affect reported reserve shares because reserves are presented in U.S. dollars. For Q2 specifically, the IMF said the dollar share of “allocated” reserves fell to 56.32% from 57.79% in Q1 largely due to non-dollar currencies appreciating against the dollar, and estimated the dollar share would have declined by only 0.12 percentage points if exchange rates had not moved.
For Q3 2025, the IMF said exchange-rate effects on the dollar share were “modest,” following a quarter (Q2) where such effects drove nearly all the reported decline. Read together, the Q2 and Q3 releases point to a reserve mix that is shifting slowly in composition, while headline percentage changes can still be amplified (or dampened) by currency valuation.
A second change: the IMF’s new COFER methodology
Alongside the Q3 2025 release, the IMF implemented a revised COFER methodology (with revisions back to 2000Q1) that eliminates the old “unallocated” component and instead imputes missing currency composition to provide a 100% global breakdown. The IMF said this update is designed to improve analytical usefulness and strengthen confidentiality of country-level reporting.
In its technical note, the IMF described the change as allocating the previously “unallocated” portion using statistical methods (including stratified mean imputation and carry-forward imputation) to build a complete time series across currencies. The IMF has also published COFER FAQs explaining that, before 2025Q3, “unallocated” reserves were essentially a residual (including reserves of non-reporters and reporting discrepancies), and that the new approach removes the need for users to make assumptions about that residual.
What this means for readers and markets
Because historical series were revised back to 2000Q1, comparisons of older COFER shares to newly updated values should be made with care. The IMF’s technical note says broad trends remain similar, but currency shares can shift modestly because previously unallocated reserves are now distributed across currencies.
How “dollar dominance” looks beyond reserves
Even as the dollar’s reserve share trends lower over long horizons, other measures still show heavy reliance on the dollar in global finance. In its 2025 edition review, the U.S. Federal Reserve noted the dollar comprised about 58% of disclosed global official reserves in 2024, versus about 20% for the euro, about 6% for the yen, about 5% for the pound, and about 2% for the renminbi.
The Federal Reserve also highlighted that the dollar’s reserve share has declined from a peak of about 72% in 2001 as reserve managers added a broader range of smaller currencies, but said the dollar remained the dominant reserve currency and the share was broadly unchanged since 2022. Separately, the Fed said the dollar is bought or sold in about 88% of global FX transactions (based on the BIS 2022 Triennial Survey), underscoring its central role in currency trading even when reserve portfolios diversify at the margins.
Reserve diversification is not just “selling dollars”
Central banks can diversify with small adjustments over time, by adding non-dollar currencies at the margin, or through valuation effects as exchange rates change. The Federal Reserve also emphasized that rising gold’s share in official reserve assets (to over 23% “now,” in its 2025 review) largely reflects price gains, while the physical quantity of gold holdings rose by less than 10% over the period it examined.
What to watch next
The IMF’s COFER releases remain one of the clearest global snapshots of how central banks allocate foreign-exchange reserves across currencies, but the Fund also emphasizes that reporting is confidential and participation is voluntary. The latest release also notes that 10.4% of total reserves had currency composition imputed in Q3 2025, a detail that matters because methodology can influence small movements in shares—especially when headlines focus on decimals.
For policymakers and investors, the near-term signal from Q3 2025 is continuity rather than a sudden break: the dollar share moved down slightly, the euro ticked up, the RMB slipped, and “other currencies” continued to gain slowly. The bigger story is that diversification appears gradual and multi-currency, while the dollar’s wider ecosystem—Treasury markets, FX trading, and international usage—remains deeply embedded in global finance.
Final thoughts
The dollar’s global reserve share at 56.92% in Q3 2025 reinforces a long-running pattern: central banks are slowly broadening their reserve mix, but the dollar remains the single largest reserve currency by a wide margin. With the IMF’s COFER methodology updated from Q3 2025 onward, the most reliable way to track the trend is to follow post-revision series and watch whether non-dollar gains continue quarter after quarter rather than reading too much into one release. The next key data points will come from subsequent COFER quarters and whether valuation-adjusted measures continue to show only modest shifts in underlying allocations.
