Czech Republic Koruna (CZK)

About the Czech Republic Koruna

The Czech Republic Koruna (CZK) is the official currency of Czechia, written with the symbol Kč placed after the amount, as in 100 Kč. It is issued by the Czech National Bank in Prague, which holds the exclusive right to put banknotes and coins into circulation. One koruna is formally divided into 100 haléřů, although no haléř coins circulate, and cash consists of six coin denominations from 1 Kč to 50 Kč and six banknotes from 100 Kč to 5,000 Kč.

The koruna is a floating currency. The Czech National Bank abandoned its fixed exchange rate peg in May 1997 and describes the arrangement in place since then as a managed float, in which the koruna's rate is set by supply and demand on the foreign exchange market and the bank reserves intervention for excessive fluctuations. At the start of 1998 the CNB switched to inflation targeting; its target has stood at 2 percent, with a tolerance band of one percentage point, since 2010.

The koruna is among Europe's younger currencies. The Czech National Bank began operating on 1 January 1993 under Act No. 6/1993 Coll., days after Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and a currency separation declared as of 8 February 1993 divided the Czechoslovak koruna into Czech and Slovak successors. Czechoslovak banknotes provisionally marked with stamps circulated while new Czech coins and banknotes were issued in the course of 1993; the 2,000 Kč note followed in 1996.

The Bank for International Settlements' Triennial Central Bank Survey 2025 recorded average daily turnover in the koruna of USD 36 billion in April 2025, a 0.4 percent share that placed it 27th among world currencies, immediately behind the Hungarian forint. Czechia does not participate in ERM II, the euro's exchange rate mechanism, and in their joint euro-adoption assessments the Ministry of Finance and the CNB have recommended that the government not set a target date for joining the euro area.

The 1993-issued 100 and 500 Kč notes were printed in England by Thomas De La Rue, but every other Czech banknote — including all six denominations valid today — has been produced by the State Printing Office in Prague, which intaglio-prints each note's portrait, text and a raised mark that lets visually impaired users identify the denomination by touch. The Czech National Bank withdrew the 50 Kč note from circulation in 2011, judging that coins outlast paper notes, which need replacing every three to four years, and left the 50 Kč coin to carry that value alone.