Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) entered 2026 in a strange split. Three retail CBDCs are live and circulating (Bahamas, Jamaica, Nigeria). China's e-CNY remains the largest pilot by far. The eurozone has moved past its preparation phase and is waiting on EU legislation. And the United States has turned against a retail CBDC by executive order while regulating private stablecoins instead. As of October 2026, the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker counts 146 countries and currency unions, representing over 98% of global GDP, exploring a CBDC in some form.
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Here is what actually changed in the last twelve months, country by country, and what to watch for the rest of 2026.
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A central bank digital currency is a digital liability of a central bank, issued directly to the public (retail CBDC) or to financial institutions (wholesale CBDC). Unlike a stablecoin, which is issued by a private company and backed by reserves, a CBDC is base money. It sits on the central bank's balance sheet, the same way physical cash does.
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For background on the private-sector alternative, see how stablecoins work and the history of stablecoins.
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Source: Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker, Bank for International Settlements, individual central bank disclosures (checked October 2026).
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The People's Bank of China continues to run the largest retail CBDC pilot on earth. By December 2025 retail e-CNY had processed more than 3.4 billion transactions worth roughly 16.7 trillion renminbi (about US$2.3 trillion), per the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker. Pilots now cover 26 cities and several large provincial capitals. The e-CNY is integrated with WeChat Pay and Alipay, accepted across major retail chains, and used to pay public-sector wages in several pilot zones.
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Notably, China has expanded e-CNY use in cross-border payments through Project mBridge, which links the central banks of China, Hong Kong, the UAE, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia (which joined in 2024). The BIS Innovation Hub formally exited mBridge in 2024, and the project has continued without BIS involvement.
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The European Central Bank's preparation phase ran from November 2023 to October 2025, and the Governing Council then decided to move to the next phase of the project, per the ECB. The ECB says that if EU lawmakers adopt the digital euro regulation in the course of 2026, the digital euro could be issued during 2029.
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The political situation is more contested than the technical one. The European Parliament is still negotiating the digital euro regulation. Concerns center on privacy thresholds, holding limits, and the role of commercial banks as intermediaries.
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The Bank of England and HM Treasury published their joint consultation response in early 2024, then opened a deeper design phase running through 2025 and 2026. The Bank of England has been explicit that no decision to build has been taken. As of October 2026, its digital pound page (last updated October 23, 2025) says the Bank is developing a detailed blueprint to support a joint Bank and HM Treasury assessment ahead of a decision on next steps in 2026.
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Unlike the eurozone, the UK has signaled that any digital pound would coexist with cash indefinitely, and the holding cap under discussion is £10,000 to £20,000 per individual.
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The three retail CBDCs that have actually launched all share a similar story: real but small. The eNaira has been live since October 2021. Adoption has stayed concentrated in airdrops and government cash transfers rather than organic retail use; the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker counts Nigeria among only three countries that have fully launched, all of them facing slow adoption.
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The Bahamas Sand Dollar is the oldest live retail CBDC. Usage is concentrated in island merchants and remittances within the archipelago, and volume remains small. JAM-DEX in Jamaica is accepted at chain retailers and small businesses across the island, but daily volume remains modest.
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The pattern across all three: launching a CBDC is technically achievable; getting citizens and merchants to use it instead of incumbent rails is the actual hard part.
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The US position rests on an executive order, not a statute. Executive Order 14178 of January 23, 2025 directs agencies to protect Americans from CBDC risks, including by prohibiting the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use of a CBDC within US jurisdiction. The House passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act on July 17, 2025, but it has not passed the Senate. The GENIUS Act (Public Law 119-27, approved July 18, 2025) set a federal framework for payment stablecoins and does not itself address a CBDC.
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The policy effect has been to push US digital-dollar use toward regulated stablecoins. For context on how stablecoin issuers fit into payment flows, see our overview of stablecoin payment rails.
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The most active CBDC experimentation in 2026 is not retail. It is wholesale, cross-border, and bank-to-bank. Two projects matter most:
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Project Agora, coordinated by the BIS Innovation Hub, brings together seven major central banks (Bank of France representing the eurosystem, Bank of England, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, Swiss National Bank, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York) plus a large group of private financial institutions. The project is exploring how tokenized commercial bank deposits and tokenized central bank money can interoperate across jurisdictions on a shared programmable platform. Agora's design phase concluded in late 2025; technical experimentation runs through 2026.
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Project mBridge, mentioned above, is the more politically loaded counterpart. It connects the central banks of China, Hong Kong, Thailand, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia. The BIS Innovation Hub left mBridge in late 2024, but the participating central banks continue to operate the platform. Bilateral commercial pilots, particularly between Chinese and UAE banks, have settled real cross-border transactions in 2025 and 2026.
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Three things will shape the rest of the year. First, whether EU lawmakers adopt the digital euro regulation. Second, the Bank of England and HM Treasury's decision on next steps for the digital pound. Third, whether China announces a formal nationwide expansion of the e-CNY beyond pilot status. Any of those would shift the trajectory meaningfully.
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The quieter story is the continued growth of private stablecoins as the de facto digital cash for cross-border flows, particularly in markets where a domestic CBDC either does not exist or has failed to gain traction. The GENIUS Act has accelerated that trend in the US, and policy in Europe and the UK is increasingly framed as a response to it.
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No, not in 2026, and the trajectory does not point that way for the foreseeable future. Outside China, no retail CBDC has come close to the scale of major payment stablecoins. USDC and USDT together settled trillions of dollars in 2025 across public blockchains. The two systems are different products serving different users: CBDCs are domestic public money infrastructure; payment stablecoins are global, programmable, and primarily dollar-denominated.
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This article draws on the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker (live database, accessed October 6, 2026), the Bank for International Settlements (Project Agora and Project mBridge updates, 2024 to 2026), the People's Bank of China (e-CNY disclosures, 2024 and 2025), the European Central Bank (preparation phase reports, 2023 to 2025), the Bank of England and HM Treasury (digital pound consultation papers, 2023 to 2025), the Central Bank of Nigeria, the Central Bank of The Bahamas, the Bank of Jamaica, and the public text of the GENIUS Act (Public Law 119-27, July 2025), and Executive Order 14178. Transaction figures are the most recent published by the Atlantic Council tracker as of October 2026.
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