3 Unstoppable Trends That Will Push Silver Higher in 2026

2025 has been a banner year for silver. Not only has its price more than doubled this year, on top of its 21% gain in 2024, but over the last 12 months, its gains have equaled those of the AI darling Nvidia, the tech-heavy Nasdaq, and even gold... combined. You can see silver's meteoric trajectory in the share price of iShares Silver Trust (NYSEMKT: SLV), a fund designed to generally track silver prices.

After such an impressive rise, it would be natural to wonder if the bull market in silver has played out. But three sweeping technological trends are supercharging demand for the precious metal, and could push prices still higher in 2026.

The math behind silver's boom

Silver is actually a byproduct metal -- it's mostly extracted from ore that gets mined in operations that are primarily focused on other precious metals.

Silver-dominant mines are rare, and silver's byproduct status means that supply can't simply be turned on and off like a tap in response to demand. This helps explain why production rose by less than 1% in 2024 even as prices began soaring.

According to The Silver Institute, the industrial demand for silver hit a record high of 680.5 million ounces last year. And three of its biggest drivers show no sign of slowing down.

1. Record solar panel installations

With governments almost everywhere determined to decarbonize, solar panel installations are smashing records. The world added 380 gigawatts (GW) of solar capacity in the first half of 2025, a 64% rise from the first half of 2024.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that it takes 1.9 million solar panels to generate 1 gigawatt of power, which can power around 800,000 homes. So in the first half of 2025 alone, over 700 million solar panels were installed globally.

Image source: Getty Images.

As the most electrically conductive metal on the periodic table, silver is essential for solar panels. Each panel contains about 0.64 ounces, so solar panels drove roughly 448 million ounces in silver demand in the first half of 2025 alone.

So far this year, Congress has repealed large portions of the Inflation Reduction Act, including provisions designed to support solar energy growth in the U.S., and President Donald Trump has used executive orders to prevent other parts of it from being funded.

Considering that, one might wonder if the pace of solar installations was going to slow down. But this boom isn't dependent on America to take the lead. In the first half of 2025, China installed more solar panels than the rest of the world combined. In Europe, the E.U. has mandated solar energy integration in new buildings starting in 2026. Even Saudi Arabia is building some of the world's biggest solar farms as it plans to get half of its domestic electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

2. The rise of electric vehicles

Because of their more complex electrical systems, electric vehicles (EVs) contain close to twice as much silver as their gas-powered counterparts. According to The Silver Institute, the average gas-powered car contained 0.84 ounces of silver at the upper range in 2021. For EVs, that figure was 1.5 ounces.

And while Trump's Big Beautiful Bill ended the longstanding $7,500 tax credit that U.S. buyers enjoyed for EV purchases in September, EV sales aren't slowing down globally. In the first 10 months of 2025, global EV sales were up 21% year over year. In 2026, the research firm Gartner forecasts that the number of EVs on roads will rise by 30% to a total of 116 million. Those tens of millions of new EVs will further drive demand for silver.

3. The rise of AI

Silver's unmatched electrical conductivity makes it essential for semiconductors, which are expected to consume 23 million ounces of silver by 2030.

While that won't make the chip market a huge direct consumer of silver (relative to the 680.5 million ounces that were mined last year), the rise of AI has led to a rapid buildout of electricity-hungry data centers. That's one reason governments around the world are increasingly turning to solar energy and nuclear reactors to meet their rising power demands.

The average nuclear reactor contains 56,000 ounces of silver, so Trump's executive order that set a goal of quadrupling U.S. nuclear power capacity, combined with a global shift toward greater use of nuclear power, is another tailwind.

The world can't go green without silver, and no nation can be a major participant in the global AI race without consuming vast quantities of it, either. Given that its supply is relatively inelastic, the white metal could get much more precious -- and pricier -- in 2026 and beyond.

William Dahl has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.