Dividend paying stocks in the U.S. stock market got off to an unexpectedly strong start in January 2026.

Tallying up the dividend-payers' metadata for the month, we find the year-over-year number of net favorable dividend actions totaled 50. With fifty more publicly traded firms announcing favorable dividend actions than unfavorable ones, January 2026 represents the best month on record since September 2023. Coincidentally, that was the last month that saw its net favorable dividend actions reach 50, as the next 15 months fell below that level, with 12 of those months recording a negative result.

Until January 2026. As we noted, this result was unexpected and largely driven by an increase in the number of firms announcing they would pay an extra, or special, dividend to their shareholding owners. The first month of 2026 had 98 such declarations, 46 more than were recorded in January 2025.

The following table presents a full summary of January 2026's dividend actions and provides a Month-over-Month (MoM) comparison with December 2025 and Year-over-Year (YoY) comparison with January 2025.

Without the extra dividends being announced, January 2026's dividend metadata is just slightly better than January 2025's data. The following chart presents the U.S. stock market's total number of dividend increases and decreases for each month from January 2004 through January 2026.
 

The number of dividend rises was 181, three more than counted a year earlier. The number of dividend decreases was 17, one less than counted a year earlier and well below the threshold that indicates recessionary conditions are present in the U.S. economy. Combined with the much larger increase in special dividends, January 2026 was a very strong month for the U.S. stock market's dividend-paying companies.

That's not to say it couldn't have been stronger. Companies that otherwise pay a set dividend will pay out extra dividends when their performance pulls in more cash than they anticipated, but they increase their ordinary dividends when they expect their good fortune to continue. Paying an extra dividend suggests many companies are taking a cautious wait-and-see approach with their dividends going into the new year.

References

Standard and Poor. S&P Market Attributes Web File. [Excel Spreadsheet]. Accessed 2 February 2026.

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