Dividend Kings List: All 56, and Whose Payout Is Safe Today

These are the U.S. companies that have raised their dividend every year for at least 50 years, through every recession since the 1970s, 2020 included. Each row pairs the streak with today’s numbers from our database: the dividend per share, what it yields at the last close, and how fast the payout actually grew over the last five years.

Fifty years is a record of past board decisions, not a promise. Some Kings keep the run alive with a 1% raise, so check the 5-year growth column before you lean on the crown.

What Makes a Dividend King

A Dividend King is a U.S. company that has raised its dividend every year for at least 50 years in a row. No index keeps the list and there is no size rule, so a small water utility like American States Water sits next to Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble. To get here, a company kept raising through the inflation of the late 1970s, 2008 and 2020.

31 of the 56 Kings are also S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats. The other 25 miss that index, mostly because they are not in the S&P 500.

How the Dividend Kings List Is Made and Kept

Nobody owns the Dividend Kings list. It is a label dividend investors use for companies with 50 or more straight years of raises, and each publisher keeps its own version. That is why the counts disagree: the public lists we checked in November 2026 named between 55 and 60 Kings. The gaps come from three calls each publisher makes: whether foreign companies count (Canada’s Fortis has a 50-year record in Canadian dollars), whether over-the-counter stocks count (Farmers & Merchants Bancorp), and whether a year counts when the yearly total went up but the rate per payment did not.

A company joins the year it announces its 50th straight raise. It leaves when it cuts, holds the dividend flat for a full year, or is bought out: Kenvue disappeared from the lists in November 2026 when Kimberly-Clark acquired it. A rename changes nothing. H2O America is the old SJW Group and The Marzetti Company was Lancaster Colony, and both kept their streaks. Some records also run through corporate history: AbbVie counts its years inside Abbott before the 2013 spin-off, and Tootsie Roll keeps its cash rate flat and raises through a yearly 3% stock dividend. The table notes each of these.

The Dividend Aristocrats work differently. They are an official index run by S&P Dow Jones Indices: S&P 500 members with 25 or more years of raises, plus size and trading minimums. The roster is reviewed every January. ProShares’ NOBL ETF tracks it, with each name held in roughly equal weight.

What Changed on the Dividend Kings List in 2026

Three companies sit at exactly 50 years: Carlisle, McDonald's and Pentair. Each one’s latest raise was its 50th in a row, which makes them the newest Kings on this list. A new King has the shortest cushion on the page: one missed raise and it drops off.

One King left. Kenvue, the Johnson & Johnson consumer spin-off that the public lists counted as a King, is gone since Kimberly-Clark bought it in November 2026. Black Hills is still here, with a merger with NorthWestern pending. A merger can end a streak if the combined company pays less per share, so that row is worth watching. This page now lists 56 Kings.

How 50-Year Streaks Survived the 1970s, 2008 and 2020

Every King has raised its dividend every year since 1977 or earlier, so each one raised through the inflation of the late 1970s, when prices rose more than 13% in 1980 and interest rates neared 20%, and through the 1981–82 recession that followed. The oldest streaks go further back (American States Water has raised for 72 years), through the 1973–74 bear market, when the S&P 500 lost close to half its value, and the price controls of the early 1970s, when Washington asked companies to keep dividend increases small. A raise smaller than inflation still counts, so a streak measures how firmly a board stands behind the dividend, not whether the dividend kept up with prices.

In 2009, S&P 500 companies paid roughly a fifth less in dividends than in 2008. Banks led the cuts: Bank of America cut its quarterly dividend to a penny, and General Electric cut for the first time since 1938. In 2020, Disney, Ford and Boeing suspended their dividends and the Federal Reserve capped what big banks could pay. The median King on this page still raised its dividend 4.5% in 2020 (see the chart above). In 2022, with U.S. inflation peaking at 9.1%, the median raise was 6.1%: the streak held, but the raise trailed prices that year.

What the survivors have in common is plain: products people keep buying in a bad economy (soap, soda, water, auto parts, adhesives), a dividend that leaves room in a bad year, and boards that treat the yearly raise as a promise. In a hard year they keep the streak with a small raise and make up for it later. That is also the risk: the label tells you the raise came, not how big it was.

What a Dividend Streak Does Not Tell You

A long streak tells you the board has treated the dividend as a priority for decades. On its own it says nothing about whether the next raise is covered: 3M and Leggett & Platt were both Dividend Kings until they cut their dividends in 2024.

So pair the streak with coverage: whether earnings and free cash flow still pay for the dividend with room to spare, and how much debt sits behind it. The size of recent raises is the other tell. A company under strain often keeps its streak alive with a token raise, which is why the table shows 5-year dividend growth next to every streak.

On this list today, 6 of the 55 Kings with five full years of data grew their dividend less than 2% a year, while Lowe's grew it 15.9% a year. Same 50-year crown, very different raises.

A high payout ratio is not always a warning, and Altria is the lesson. It pays out most of what it earns. Its stated policy is about 80% of adjusted earnings per share, and it has still raised for 56 straight years, yielding 5.86% at the last close. That ratio is a choice by a company with little left to reinvest in, not a sign of distress. The warning signs are a payout ratio that climbs because earnings are falling, or a dividend paid with borrowed money. Look at the trend, not just the level, to tell policy from pressure.

What DRIP Does to a Dividend King: The Reinvestment Math

Say you buy 100 shares of a Dividend King at $100 each, $10,000 in all. It yields 2.5% (about the average on this list today), the dividend grows 5.8% a year (the list’s middle 5-year pace), and the share price rises at the same pace, so the yield holds.

Take the dividends as cash, and in year 20 your 100 shares pay $772 a year. DRIP them instead, and every quarterly payment buys a sliver of new stock. By year 20 you own 164.6 shares without adding a dollar, and they pay $1,271 a year, which is 12.7% on your original $10,000. The streak raises the payout on every share, and the reinvested shares collect every raise too. That is the snowball.

Run it on a real ticker with its own price, yield and payout history in the DRIP calculator. To see it happen on the Dividend Kings you already own, add them to a free portfolio: each payout fills in from your buy date, and every new DRIP share is counted, with no retyping after each payout and no broker login.

How to Use This Table

Rows run from the longest streak down. Rate → Yield is the yearly dividend per share at the latest regular rate and what it yields at the last close. 5-yr div CAGR is how fast that dividend grew each year from 2020 to 2025, so a long streak growing 2% a year and one growing 10% a year stop looking alike.

Read across a row rather than down one column. A high yield next to slow or shrinking growth often means the market expects trouble; a low yield with fast growth means the payout is climbing from a smaller base. Click any ticker for its full payment history, or track the ones you own to see every payout dated, with DRIP shares counted.

Kings vs Aristocrats vs Dividend Growers: Which List Fits

The three lists answer different questions. Dividend Kings have the deepest record, 50 or more years, and can be any U.S. company, so they include small water utilities and regional banks that most index funds skip. The trade-off is a short list, heavy in consumer staples, industrials and utilities, with almost no younger businesses. Dividend Aristocrats need 25 years and an S&P 500 seat. That brings in a wider mix, from IBM and Roper to Exxon and Chevron, and the whole list can be bought as one ETF. Dividend growers have shorter streaks but often faster raises. Visa and Microsoft, for example, are still short of 25 years but have raised faster than the median Aristocrat in recent years. Some of them are tomorrow’s Aristocrats.

Choose by what you need the payout to do. If it pays bills now, the Kings’ record of raising through 2008 and 2020 is the point. If you have decades to DRIP, a faster grower’s raises compound on more shares every year. Many investors hold a core from one list and add from another. Compare the Dividend Aristocrats, the dividend growers list, and this month’s dividend increases to see who is raising fastest right now.

Questions About the Dividend Kings

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