A Treasury bond is the US government's longest fixed-rate loan: 20 or 30 years of coupons every six months, then your face value back. That length explains almost everything about it. It lets a buyer lock in income for decades, and it makes the market price swing far more than any bill or note when rates move. Using Treasury's 2026 bond auctions, this guide shows what $10,000 of a bond pays, how much its price moved in a single autumn, who buys these bonds and when new ones come to market. The US Treasuries hub covers the rest of the family.
What is a Treasury bond?
A Treasury bond is a fixed-rate US government security with a term of 20 or 30 years that pays interest every six months and repays face value at maturity.
Treasury sells bonds with terms of 20 and 30 years. The rules match those for notes: the coupon is fixed at the first auction and never set below 0.125%, the minimum is $100 in $100 steps, and a noncompetitive bid can buy up to $10 million per auction. Bonds exist only as electronic records in TreasuryDirect or at a bank or broker, they are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, and the bonds sold today cannot be called early. Each one can also be split into zero-coupon Treasury STRIPS, and bonds supply most of the STRIPS in existence.
The only structural difference from a Treasury note is length, but length changes how a bond behaves. Bonds are also the smaller market: $5.55 trillion of bonds were outstanding at the end of September 2026, against $16.28 trillion of notes.
Both terms have had gaps in their history. Treasury reintroduced the 30-year bond with a $14 billion auction on February 9, 2006, its first bond offering in five years, and brought back the 20-year bond on May 20, 2020, selling $20 billion with a 1.125% coupon. That 2020 bond matures in 2040 and still trades, and coupons that low are why some older bonds sell far below par today.
How much interest does a Treasury bond pay?
A bond pays half its coupon rate on your face value every six months, so $10,000 of a bond with a 5.125% coupon pays $256.25 twice a year.
The two newest bonds both carry 5.125% coupons. The 30-year bond first sold on August 13, 2026 (CUSIP 912810UW6) matures on August 15, 2056, and the 20-year bond first sold on August 19 (CUSIP 912810UX4) matures on August 15, 2046. Both pay on February 15 and August 15; when either date lands on a weekend or federal holiday, the money arrives on the next business day.
Worked example: What $10,000 of the August 2026 30-year bond pays
- Bought at the August 13, 2026 auction for 98.627017 per $100: $9,862.70, plus $2.79 of accrued interest for August 15 to 17
- Coupon: $10,000 × 5.125% ÷ 2 = $256.25 every February 15 and August 15
- Number of coupons: 60, from February 15, 2027 to August 15, 2056
- Total coupons: $15,375.00, plus $10,000 of face value at maturity
- Cash received over 30 years: $25,375.00, for $9,865.49 paid
- The $137.30 discount to face value is why the auction's 5.216% yield is a little higher than the 5.125% coupon
The coupon never changes, so that income is fixed whatever happens to rates. What changes is the yield a new buyer receives, which moves the price. The 30-year bond sold in May 2026 has a 5.000% coupon, and a 20-year bond with the same 5.000% coupon sold above par at a June 2026 reopening, at 100.909218 per $100, because the yield had dipped to 4.927%.
Coupons are taxed by the IRS in the year they are paid and are exempt from state and local income tax. Are T-bills taxable? covers reporting for all Treasuries.
Why do bond prices swing so much when rates move?
Long bonds have the most future payments tied to today's yield, so a change in rates reprices decades of cash flows at once.
Picture a buyer who locked in 5.125% for 30 years when new bonds suddenly start paying 6%. To sell, that buyer has to cut the price far enough that the next owner still earns 6% overall, and with up to 60 coupons left, the cut has to be large. The standard gauge is modified duration: about 12.2 for a new 20-year bond and 14.9 for a new 30-year bond at October 30, 2026 yields, against 7.8 for a 10-year note and 1.9 for a 2-year note. Each unit of duration is roughly 1% of price per 1-point move in yields.
The August-to-October 2026 cycle shows it in real prices. Both bonds were sold three times, and each sale set a new price for the same security:
| Auction | 30-year yield | 30-year price per $100 | 20-year yield | 20-year price per $100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| August, new issue | 5.216% (Aug 13) | 98.627017 | 5.204% (Aug 19) | 99.021288 |
| September reopening | 5.308% (Sep 10) | 97.262274 | 5.420% (Sep 15) | 96.423840 |
| October reopening | 5.618% (Oct 8) | 92.889131 | 5.469% (Oct 21) | 95.853363 |
In about two months the 30-year bond lost 5.8% of its price on a 0.402-point rise in yield, and the 20-year bond lost 3.2% on a 0.265-point rise. The 10-year note needed a 0.617-point jump over a similar stretch to lose 4.7%. Why bond prices fall when rates rise explains the duration math behind these numbers, and the Treasury yield curve page tracks where long yields stand now.
What does a 1-point rate rise do to a 30-year bond?
At October 30, 2026 yields, a 1-point rise would cut a new $10,000 30-year bond priced at par by about $1,339, or 13.4%.
Worked example: The August 2026 30-year bond, eight weeks later
Suppose you bought $10,000 of the new 30-year bond at its August 13, 2026 auction and valued it at the October 8 reopening price, when the yield on the same bond had risen from 5.216% to 5.618%.
- Cost on August 17: $9,862.70 price plus $2.79 accrued interest = $9,865.49
- Value on October 15: $9,288.91 price plus $84.95 accrued interest = $9,373.86
- Price change: −$573.79, or −5.8%
- Change including the interest earned along the way: −$491.63, or about −5.0%
- Held to August 15, 2056, the same bond still pays all 60 coupons and the $10,000
That was a 0.4-point move. The table scales it up, using new bonds priced at par with coupons equal to Treasury's par yields on October 30, 2026 and an instant, parallel shift in yields. Each figure is the change in market value of $10,000 face.
| Move in yields | 20-year bond (5.34% coupon) | 30-year bond (5.31% coupon) |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 1 point | +$1,328 | +$1,675 |
| Fall 0.5 point | +$636 | +$790 |
| Rise 0.5 point | −$585 | −$706 |
| Rise 1 point | −$1,125 | −$1,339 |
| Rise 2 points | −$2,080 | −$2,419 |
Two features stand out. Falling yields help more than rising yields hurt: the 30-year bond gains $1,675 on a 1-point drop but loses $1,339 on a 1-point rise. And the losses are large next to the income: the 1-point loss on the 30-year bond equals about two and a half years of its $531 annual coupon, and the 20-year bond's $1,125 loss about two years of its $534 coupon. For the same move, a 13-week bill would lose about $25.
Who buys Treasury bonds, and why?
Investment funds, foreign investors, the Federal Reserve and dealers take almost all new bonds at auction, while individuals receive well under 1%.
Treasury publishes who is awarded each auction by investor class. For the 12 auctions of 30-year bonds from November 2025 through October 8, 2026, and the 11 auctions of 20-year bonds from November 2025 through September 2026, the split looked like this:
| Investor class | 30-year bonds | 20-year bonds |
|---|---|---|
| Investment funds (mutual funds, money managers, hedge funds) | 61.9% | 66.4% |
| Foreign and international | 15.2% | 11.8% |
| Federal Reserve | 11.6% | 8.0% |
| Dealers and brokers | 10.9% | 13.0% |
| Individuals | 0.2% | 0.7% |
| Pension funds and insurers bidding directly | 0.1% | under 0.1% |
| Total awarded | $312.3 billion | $168.4 billion |
These figures record who placed the winning bids, not who holds the bonds later. A pension fund that buys through its money manager, or from a dealer after the auction, shows up under those classes instead. The Federal Reserve's share is its reinvestment of maturing holdings, which Treasury adds on top of the amount offered to the public.
The reasons for buying fall into a few groups:
- Matching long promises. Pension plans and life insurers owe payments decades away, and the present value of those promises rises when rates fall, just as a long bond's price does. Owning long bonds lets the two move together. When Treasury revived the 30-year bond in 2006, members of its borrowing advisory committee pointed to large demand from the pension fund community. In February 2026 the committee still called defined-benefit pension funds a traditional buyer of long duration, while noting they are a smaller segment than they once were.
- Hedging other assets. When fears about growth push yields down, long bond prices rise and can offset losses elsewhere in a portfolio. The relationship is not fixed, though: when inflation drives rates up, stocks and long bonds can fall together.
- Collateral and liquidity. Dealers, funds and banks use Treasuries as collateral for borrowing and to manage how sensitive their portfolios are to rates.
- Foreign demand. Across all marketable Treasuries, foreign investors held about a third at the end of September 2025, according to the committee, and private foreign buyers have historically held more of the long end than foreign central banks.
When does Treasury auction new bonds and reopenings?
Treasury sells a new 20-year and a new 30-year bond each February, May, August and November, then reopens each one in the following two months.
A reopening sells more of the same bond, with the same CUSIP, coupon and maturity date, at a price set by the new auction's yield. Buyers also pay the accrued interest since the last coupon date, which is why the October 2026 reopening of the 30-year bond carried $8.49524 of accrued interest per $1,000. Before that sale, $53.3 billion of the bond was already outstanding; after three auctions, the August 2026 bond had been offered in amounts of $25 billion, $22 billion and $22 billion, and the 20-year bond in amounts of $16 billion, $13 billion and $13 billion.
The tentative schedule for the next cycle, with settlement dates in brackets:
- November 12, 2026: new 30-year bond (November 16)
- November 18, 2026: new 20-year bond (November 30)
- December 10, 2026: 30-year reopening (December 15)
- December 23, 2026: 20-year reopening (December 28)
- January 13, 2027: 30-year reopening (January 15)
- January 20, 2027: 20-year reopening (January 22)
Treasury sets the sizes at its quarterly refunding announcement, due on November 4, 2026, and publishes each auction's details about a week before it is held. How Treasury auctions work explains bidding and the results release.
How can you buy a Treasury bond?
You can bid at auction through TreasuryDirect or a broker, buy an existing bond from a broker, or own bonds indirectly through a fund.
- TreasuryDirect takes noncompetitive bids from $100 with no fees and pays coupons to your bank account. You cannot sell there: a bond must be held for 45 calendar days and then moved to a bank or broker before it can be sold.
- A broker can bid at auctions for you and also buy older bonds already trading, including low-coupon issues priced well below par. The discount on a bond bought in the market is generally market discount, which the IRS taxes as ordinary interest income when you sell or redeem the bond rather than as a capital gain.
- Long-term Treasury funds hold many bonds and replace them as they age, so they never mature; their price swings never end the way a single bond's do at maturity.
- STRIPS let you buy just one payment from a bond, such as its principal in 2056, at a deep discount, with even larger price swings.
For money you may need in the next few years, short-term vs long-term Treasuries weighs the trade-off, and T-bills vs notes vs bonds sets the three main types side by side.
What are the risks of Treasury bonds?
Bonds carry minimal credit risk but the most interest-rate risk of any fixed-rate Treasury, along with inflation, reinvestment and liquidity risks.
- Interest-rate risk. A 2-point rise would take about $2,419 off $10,000 of a new 30-year bond. Thirty years is longer than most plans, so the chance of needing to sell at a bad moment is real.
- Inflation risk. The coupon is fixed in dollars for decades. On October 30, 2026 the 30-year par yield was 5.31% and the 30-year TIPS real yield 3.08%, an implied inflation rate of about 2.23% a year. If inflation runs higher, the bond's real return shrinks; TIPS explained covers the inflation-protected alternative.
- Reinvestment risk. Coupons have to be reinvested at future rates. The risk is smaller than for bills, but not zero.
- Liquidity. Older bonds can trade at wider bid-ask spreads than new ones, and bonds held at TreasuryDirect must be transferred out before they can be sold.
- Concentration in one rate. A single long bond ties a large sum to one yield for decades. A ladder of maturities or a mix with shorter Treasuries spreads that bet; the compound interest calculator shows how much reinvested coupons contribute over long periods.
Full faith and credit protects the payments, not the price. Are Treasuries risk-free? puts that distinction in context, and types of investment risk defines each risk on this list.