Will the price of gold and silver continue to rise in 2026? Jewelry will certainly cost more.
Are we expecting a gold 2026? Looking at market trends, it would seem so. Investors, jewelers, and those looking to buy even a simple gold wedding ring, will find themselves spending significantly more. The end of 2025, with the price of gold exceeding $4,500 an ounce, or about $127 per gram (and up to over €120), marks a historic record. A typical wedding ring, for example, weighs between 3 and 10 grams, without stones or diamonds. This means that the intrinsic value, if it were made of 24-karat gold, i.e., not alloyed with other metals, would range from €360 to €1,200. And this is for a simple metal ring, not to mention the manufacturing and marketing costs, as well as the tax, which further increase the price.
In reality, however, this isn’t the case, because a gold ring is typically sold at 18 karats, meaning its gold content is only 75% of the weight of the piece. This is even less true when considering 14 or even 9 karat jewelry: in those cases, the gold content drops dramatically. It’s easy to predict that the number of 14 karat pieces will increase in 2026. Not only that, jewelers will compete to make their jewelry ever lighter (but also more fragile) to reduce the impact of the price of the yellow metal. Titanium and steel jewelry collections will also multiply.
Jewelers specializing in silver will likely also struggle, given that the price of this metal has also doubled in the space of 12 months. In 2025, the price of silver quickly surpassed $70 an ounce. For example, if at the beginning of 2025, a gram of silver cost around 1 euro per gram, by the end of the year it had risen to over 2 euros. Moreover, platinum has also doubled in value and therefore does not constitute an alternative.
And what will happen in the coming months? No one can predict the future, of course. But some factors give cause for reflection. Many operators suspect that the prices reached do not reflect reality. Gold, for example, seems to have risen in price due to well-defined phenomena, such as the need of large investors to diversify away from the dollar. The reasoning is: the American economy, despite the White House’s proclamations, is uncertain. It is better to sell dollars or dollar-denominated assets (such as US Treasury bonds, which will eventually lose value with the explosion of US public debt) and buy a safe haven like gold. This is what large investors and central banks do, for example, to accumulate gold reserves. In short, a true golden age is looming, but not in the sense of the electoral promises.
