:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-627023930-552ada802d6c460f9bf5b1f4b43f7468.jpg "Silver Prices Are Up 25% Already In 2026. Can They Keep Rising?")
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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- The new year has done nothing to halt the silver price rally.
- The factors that drove the rally in 2025 remain in place, with new geopolitical concerns in play.
- Investors are reallocating normal portfolio assets to silver, suggesting the surge could persist.
Geopolitical uncertainty and a continuation of last year’s demand trends keep driving the price of silver to unprecedented heights so far in 2026. But how sustainable is the upward climb?
The rally has been nothing less than breathtaking. Silver’s price repeatedly reached all-time highs in late 2025, ending the year with a near-150% gain.
The new year has done nothing to stem the rally, with silver already up another 25% in its first two weeks. Spot silver prices surged to an all-time high above $93 per ounce during Thursday’s session before giving back some of those gains on Friday to trade around $90.
Why This Matters to Investors
The price of silver has tripled in the past 12 months as investors have increasingly added the precious metal to their portfolios amid geopolitical and economic uncertainty. Experts say the rally should continue as the factors that sparked the big gains over the past year remain in place.
New data show just how much investors have crowded into silver in recent weeks. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the crowd is too big, according to Vanda, an independent data and research firm.
“This isn’t just a meme-stock spike,” Vanda said in a research note Thursday. “We are witnessing a structural accumulation that has now surpassed the heights of the 2021 ‘Silver Squeeze.'”
Demand Factors Still in Place
That’s when silver more than doubled in price from Covid-19 pandemic lows. But this time, factors— Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, the weak U.S. dollar, rising global debt, inflation and tariff concerns— that have fed gains in all precious metals are more multi-faceted.
Those factors persist as 2026 dawns. Moreover, since the start of the year, the U.S. arrest of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, as well as threats of U.S. intervention in Iran to quell government crackdowns on protestors, have only increased the desire of investors to seek the safe-haven reputation of precious metals.
Part of silver’s surge, meanwhile, centers on physical stockpiles that have accumulated in U.S. warehouses as buyers bought increased amounts last year. That buying disrupted normal silver flows in the global market and left the traditional global hub in London in short supply. It reflected a response to President Trump’s threatened tariffs on certain precious metals, including silver and platinum. Trump this week backed off those threats.
Investment Thirst
Recent data shows that investors have been purchasing silver at previously unseen amounts.
In the past month, retail investors have spent $921.8 million to buy silver-linked exchange-traded funds, Vanda’s data shows. That includes an unprecedented 169 straight days of positive inflows into the popular iShares Silver Trust.
It represents more than just piling into a hot investment, Vanda concludes.
“Retail (investors are) no longer just ‘dipping in,’ they are fundamentally re-allocating,” the firm said. “Unlike the social-media-driven frenzy of 2021, today’s activity suggests silver is being treated as a core macro trading asset.”
In short, that means more investors are adding silver as a regular portion of their overall asset portfolios. If that continues, so could silver’s price run.
