On 9 October 2026 the Netherlands and Indonesia signed two transfer agreements at Indonesia House in Amsterdam covering more than 30,000 items — the largest restitution in Indonesian history. Indonesian culture minister Fadli Zon and Dutch education, culture and science minister Rianne Letschert put their names to deals returning the Eugène Dubois Collection — 29,763 objects and 427 ancestral remains — alongside twenty cultural treasures headlined by the 38-carat Banjarmasin diamond.

The Dubois material was gathered in Java and Sumatra between 1888 and 1900 by the Dutch anatomist Eugène Dubois, whose excavations produced the first Homo erectus fossils: the Java Man skullcap, molar and femur that reshaped the science of human evolution. Held since by Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the collection was the subject of a 2022 Indonesian restitution request. The independent Colonial Collections Committee concluded the Dutch state had never owned it and that local people were likely coerced into revealing fossil sites. A first instalment of four fossils was handed over in December 2025.

The twenty cultural objects come from the Rijksmuseum and the Wereldmuseum. They include the Banjarmasin diamond, once part of the Bornean sultanate's regalia and brought to the Netherlands after the 1859 conquest; a long Acehnese sword; a Quran manuscript connected with national hero Teuku Umar; manuscripts of the Aceh Sultanate; 17th-century wayang beber scrolls; and carved tombstones from Aceh. Advisory reports published on 9 October found each had been involuntarily dispossessed.

Zon said Indonesia did not intend to reopen old wounds but to heal them, calling the return an act of historical reconciliation built on "concrete action" and mutual respect. The ministers also pledged joint research into further Dutch holdings, including the Raden Saleh collection and the Theodor Verhoeven ancestral remains.