CBDC Tracker 2026: 146 Countries Exploring, Only 3 Fully Launched

If you measured the future of money by how many central banks are studying it, CBDCs would look unstoppable. Almost every major economy has a team on it. If you measured by how many ordinary people use one, you would conclude they barely exist. Both readings are correct, and the gap between them is the most interesting thing about digital currencies in 2026.

The headline numbers

Those figures come from the Atlantic Council's CBDC Tracker, which is the most widely cited count. As of its May 2026 update the tracker records 41 pilot projects, down from the record 49 pilots Axios reported in July 2025, and 77 jurisdictions in an advanced stage that spans development, pilot and launch. The three launched currencies belong to the Bahamas, Jamaica and Nigeria. None of them has yet shown sustained mass use.

The Bank for International Settlements tells a similar story from the inside. Its 2024 survey, published in August 2025, found that 91% of the 93 central banks that responded were exploring a retail CBDC, a wholesale CBDC or both. More than one in three said stablecoins and other crypto assets had pushed them to speed up.

Research is cheap; launching is hard

Why the gulf between 146 and 3? Launching a retail CBDC forces a central bank to answer questions it can comfortably avoid in a research paper. Who runs the wallets? What happens to bank deposits if people move savings into central bank money? How much privacy should a payment have? What does the central bank do when a phone is lost?

Every serious project has hit at least one of these. The euro area's answer is holding limits and no interest. India's answer is a wallet that pays nothing and caps transfers in some apps. China, as we explain below, has just changed its answer entirely.

The two giants: China and India

The largest pilots by far are China's e-CNY and India's e₹. China's central bank said that by the end of September 2025, the e-CNY had processed 3.32 billion transactions worth a cumulative 14.2 trillion yuan, with 225 million personal wallets opened. From 1 January 2026, e-CNY wallet balances became interest-bearing liabilities of commercial banks, a structural shift that turns digital cash into something closer to a deposit.

India's retail e₹ had a little over 8 million users and more than 120 million transactions by December 2025. It is growing, but at nothing like the pace of UPI. See our digital rupee explainer for the figures.

Europe is the one to watch

The digital euro is the most consequential retail CBDC still on the drawing board, because it would cover a large, rich, cash-heavy economy. The European Parliament voted 416 to 169 in July 2026 to open negotiations on the legislation, with a deal targeted by the end of 2026. The ECB has pencilled in a pilot for 2027 and possible issuance in 2029. We walk through the details in digital euro explained.

The CBDC story of 2026 is less about coins for consumers and more about pipes between banks.

The quiet shift to wholesale

The BIS survey noted that wholesale CBDC work is, overall, further along than retail. That matches what is happening on the ground:

• mBridge, the multi-central-bank platform linking China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the UAE, had passed about $55.5 billion in cumulative cross-border value by January 2026, according to Atlantic Council data cited by Reuters. The PBOC's own count, almost 500 billion yuan by the end of 2025, is higher.
• Project Agorá, led by the BIS with seven central banks and more than 40 financial firms, reported in May 2026 that its prototype could settle tokenised cross-border payments in seconds.
• India's wholesale e₹ is being used to test settlement of government bonds, call money and tokenised certificates of deposit.

Wholesale projects dodge the hardest political questions. Nobody worries about bank runs when the only users are banks.

The ones going the other way

Not everyone is moving forward. In the United States, Executive Order 14178, signed on 23 January 2025, bars federal agencies from establishing or promoting a retail CBDC. The tracker now classifies the US as inactive on retail. Brazil, once a poster child with its Drex project, told participants in November 2025 that it would shut down the blockchain infrastructure behind it and refocus on a narrower collateral project. We cover that turn in Pix and Drex.

A quick tour by region

• Caribbean: the Bahamas and Jamaica were early launchers and remain the best evidence that a small, well-run CBDC can go live, and that going live does not guarantee people will use it.
• Africa: Nigeria's eNaira is the continent's only fully launched retail CBDC. Elsewhere, mobile money services already meet many of the needs a CBDC would target.
• Asia: China and India run the largest pilots, Hong Kong and Thailand sit inside mBridge.
• Gulf: the UAE remains a core mBridge participant, while the Saudi Central Bank ended its membership after completing a proof of concept.
• Europe: the euro area is legislating, with a deal targeted for the end of 2026.
• Americas: the US has stepped back from retail, and Brazil has narrowed Drex.

How to read the tracker

A few things to keep in mind when you see a big number quoted:

1. Exploring is a low bar. It can mean a single research paper or a working group.
2. A pilot is not a product. Many pilots are closed tests with a handful of banks.
3. Launched does not mean used. All three launched retail CBDCs have struggled with adoption.
4. Wholesale and retail are different animals. Counting them together hides where the real progress is.

Our reading is that CBDCs are becoming infrastructure that most people will never see directly. The digital money most consumers touch will more likely be bank deposits and, increasingly, stablecoins and tokenised deposits, with central bank money settling underneath.

Country counts are from the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker as reported in 2025 and early 2026; the tracker is updated periodically and counts may shift.

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