A key discovery in the last two decades has been the realisation that gold, when prepared as supported nanoparticles, is exceptionally effective as a redox catalyst. The catalytic efficacy is enhanced further by the alloying of gold with palladium and this is particularly exemplified for the direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide where supported gold palladium alloy nanoparticles are found to be highly active. In this paper we report a study of ceria-supported gold, palladium and gold-palladium nanoparticles for the direct synthesis of hydrogen peroxide and show that ceria can be a potentially interesting support for this reaction. However, with current methods of catalyst fabrication ceria-supported monometallic palladium catalysts have a superior performance to bimetallic gold-palladium catalysts. (C) 2011 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.