Last updated: September 2026

Who decides whose portrait goes on a banknote?

The issuing authority decides, working inside whatever law and custom apply to it. In the United States the power sits with the Secretary of the Treasury, advised by a standing committee. In the United Kingdom the Governor of the Bank of England makes the final call after public consultation. In the euro area the ECB Governing Council decides.

The American arrangement is statutory. Title 31 of the United States Code directs that "the Secretary of the Treasury shall engrave and print United States currency" from intaglio plates on presses the Secretary selects (31 U.S.C. 5114). Sitting beneath that authority is the Advanced Counterfeit Deterrence Steering Committee, which the Bureau of Engraving and Printing describes as drawing stakeholders from Treasury, the BEP, the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Reserve System and the United States Secret Service, and which sets the order in which denominations are redesigned (Bureau of Engraving and Printing).

The British arrangement is deliberately public. When the Bank of England opened the choice of theme for its next series, it ran a consultation, counted the nominations and announced the winning theme, and for the follow-up shortlist it stated that the Governor, Andrew Bailey, "will make the final decision, taking into account the public's feedback" (Bank of England, 3 June 2026). Consultation is real but advisory; the decision still belongs to the central bank.

Why are there no living people on US money?

Because federal law bars portraits of living persons on US currency. The relevant statute is short and absolute: "Only the portrait of a deceased individual may appear on United States currency and securities. The name of the individual shall be inscribed below the portrait."

That single sentence, at 31 U.S.C. 5114(b), does two jobs. It closes the door on any living figure, which removes a whole category of political argument from currency design. And it requires the name to be printed under the face, which is why every American portrait is captioned. The caption rule has a visible history: uscurrency.gov dates the addition of names to portraits to 1889, and the practice has been universal since.

The same subsection is also where the inscription "In God We Trust" is authorized, placed at the Secretary's discretion. The restriction to deceased individuals is a genuine outlier among major issuers. The United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and every other realm that has carried the reigning monarch put a living person on their money as a matter of course, which is precisely what changed in Britain on 5 June 2024.

Who is on each US banknote, and who has not been?

Seven faces cover the circulating denominations: Washington on the $1, Jefferson on the $2, Lincoln on the $5, Hamilton on the $10, Jackson on the $20, Grant on the $50 and Franklin on the $100. The set has been fixed since the standardization of 1929, and it is a narrower group than most people assume.

Two of the seven never held the presidency. Alexander Hamilton was the first Secretary of the Treasury, and Benjamin Franklin held no executive office at all; the Bureau of Engraving and Printing lists him simply as "Statesman" (Bureau of Engraving and Printing FAQs). Lincoln's portrait goes back furthest in the federal record: uscurrency.gov notes that the first notes issued by the federal government, the Demand Notes of 1861, carried Abraham Lincoln's portrait, and that the 1869 series of United States notes contains the first use of George Washington's portrait on the $1.

The omissions are as informative as the inclusions, and the BEP states both plainly. On women: "Martha Washington is the only woman whose portrait has appeared on a U.S. currency note. It appeared on the face of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891, and the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896." On Black Americans: "There are no African Americans pictured on U.S. currency," though four of the seventeen Registers of the Treasury whose signatures appeared on notes were Black men, and Azie Taylor Morton, the 36th Treasurer of the United States, signed currency between September 1977 and January 1981. Our page on women on banknotes sets that record against what other countries have done.

Which portraits are on the world's banknotes?

The table below gathers the portraits a world collector meets most often, with the date each portrait first appeared on that country's currency and whether it is still on a note today. Dates are the issuer's own. Where a note is being replaced, both the outgoing and incoming portrait circulate together for years.

United States entries per the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and uscurrency.gov; British dates per the Bank of England's £10, £50 and history pages; Japanese dates per the Bank of Japan; Canadian notes per the Bank of Canada; euro dates per the European Central Bank.

How does the Bank of England choose its characters?

By announcing a character years before the note appears, then designing around them. Churchill was announced in April 2013 and issued in September 2016; Turing was announced in July 2019 and issued in June 2021. That gap is deliberate, because the portrait has to be engraved, tested and integrated with the security features before anything is printed.

The tradition is about to end. In March 2026 the Bank announced that images of the UK's wildlife would feature on the next series, after a public consultation in which the nature theme received the highest proportion of nominations. Its own framing of the change is worth quoting: "For more than 50 years, the Bank has proudly showcased many inspirational historical figures who have helped shape national thought, innovation, leadership and values on its banknotes" (Bank of England, 11 March 2026). The Bank also judged that wildlife images would work better for security features the public can recognize and tell apart.

The second consultation, launched on 3 June 2026 and running to 3 July, put a shortlist of native species to the public: bottlenose dolphin, brown hare, European hedgehog, grey seal, pine marten and red fox among the mammals; Atlantic puffin, barn owl, common kingfisher, Eurasian curlew, great spotted woodpecker and white-tailed eagle among the birds; and Atlantic salmon, basking shark, buff-tailed bumblebee, common frog, Emperor dragonfly and marsh fritillary butterfly in the third group. The outcome is due by the end of 2026. Note what the consultations actually cover: the Bank describes the shortlisted animals as the central image on each denomination, and its announcements say nothing about the monarch's portrait, which sits elsewhere on the note. For the wider arc, see our history of Bank of England notes and our page on Queen Elizabeth II banknotes.

Why are there no people on euro banknotes?

Because a shared currency across many nations cannot easily agree on whose national heroes to honor. The euro's answer was to drop real people entirely and use architecture instead, under the theme "ages and styles of Europe," with windows and doorways on the front and bridges on the back.

The ECB goes further than avoiding controversial figures: the designs avoid real places too. "Like the first series, the new Europa series banknotes show architectural styles from various periods in Europe's history, but do not show any actual existing monuments or bridges" (European Central Bank). Each denomination carries a period rather than a building: Classical on the €5, Romanesque on the €10, Gothic on the €20, Renaissance on the €50, Baroque and rococo on the €100 and 19th century iron and glass on the €200.

The one face on a euro note belongs to nobody living or dead. The second series is named for Europa, a figure from Greek mythology whose image was taken from a vase in the Louvre in Paris, and the ECB says she was included because she has an obvious link to the continent and "adds a human touch to the banknotes." A third series is now in development: the Governing Council selected two candidate themes in November 2023, "European culture" and "Rivers and birds," chose the motifs in January 2025, ran a design contest and is due to decide around the end of 2026. Australia has taken the same road on one denomination, with the Reserve Bank stating of its redesigned note: "We won't be putting a portrait on the $5 note this time," in favor of a theme celebrating the connection of First Nations peoples to Country (Reserve Bank of Australia). Our history of euro banknotes follows the currency from 2002.

Why do issuers use portraits at all?

Because a human face is the hardest thing in the world to fake convincingly in front of a human being. People are extraordinarily sensitive to small errors in a face, far more than to errors in a pattern or a building, which makes a portrait an unusually effective check that anyone can perform without equipment.

The Bank of England Museum puts it directly, in a caption on 1961 test prints of the Queen's portrait for the Series B £5 and £10: "Portraits are a useful security feature for banknotes as the human eye can easily detect changes to an image of a face" (Bank of England Museum). That is why portraits are usually the most heavily engraved element on a note, why they are repeated in the watermark or the window, and why counterfeit portraits so often look subtly dead around the eyes.

The engraving itself is the defense. A portrait cut by hand into steel produces line work with depth and variable pressure that a scanner flattens, and the raised intaglio ink can be felt with a fingertip. Our page on intaglio banknote engraving explains the craft, the banknote design process covers how a portrait becomes a note, and banknote watermarks covers the paper-based twin of the printed face.

What do portrait changes mean for collectors?

A portrait change closes a field. The moment a face stops being printed, the population of notes carrying it can only fall as circulating examples wear out, and high-grade survivors become the permanent record. Three such closures are running at once right now, which is unusual.

The British change is the slowest and the largest. The Bank of England began issuing King Charles III notes on 5 June 2024 and prints them only to replace worn notes, so Queen Elizabeth II polymer notes will co-circulate for years while their numbers fall. Behind that sits a second, bigger closure: once the wildlife series arrives, Churchill, Austen, Turner and Turing become a completed set of four, and the Bank's fifty-year run of historical figures ends with them.

Japan's change was abrupt by comparison. The 2024 series replaced Fukuzawa, Higuchi and Noguchi on all three denominations at once on 3 July 2024, and the previous notes remain in use but are no longer issued. Canada is mid-change, with King Charles III unveiled on the vertical $20 in September 2026. In every case the collecting logic is the same, and it is the logic of a finite series: buy the best grade you can while the supply is still wide, and let the story carry the piece. Start with the banknote grading guide for the 1 to 70 scale, read how to collect world banknotes for a plan, and browse the current stock in banknotes by country.

Planet Banknote is a family-owned dealership in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 2021. Every note is sourced direct from mints, central banks, and authorized distributors, inspected through our Planet Banknote Verified process, and ships with a free Certificate of Authenticity. US orders ship free via USPS Priority, and every order includes a free bonus gift.