The Best Dividend Kings to Buy in 2026
Income investors prize dividend kings—and for good reason. These elite companies that have increased their dividends for decades can provide investors with a sense of income certainty.
But a long dividend streak alone doesn’t make a dividend king a compelling investment. Here’s how to determine which dividend kings are stocks to buy today.
What Are Dividend Kings?
To qualify as a dividend king, a company must increase its dividend for 50 consecutive years or more.
With five decades of dividend increases at their backs, these companies clearly prioritize dividend growth. Even so, there are no dividend guarantees. Onetime dividend king 3M MMM cut its payout in 2024 following the spinoff of its healthcare business and resetting of its dividend policy. And shortly after hitting the 50-year mark of consecutive dividend increases, VF VFC cut its dividend in 2023.
How can investors avoid those dividend kings most likely to cut their payouts? “Companies with wide economic moats have been less likely to cut dividends than companies with narrow moats,” explains Morningstar Indexes strategist Dan Lefkovitz. “No-moat businesses are most likely to cut.”
And of course, buying a dividend king without paying attention to valuation may mean sacrificing total return. “If you buy a stock that’s way overvalued just for the dividend, that could be a poor total return over time,” points out Morningstar director of equity research Damien Conover. “You really want to combine valuation, the ability to pay the dividend, and the economic moat.”
The 2 Best Dividend Kings to Buy in 2026
From Morningstar’s perspective, we think these two dividend kings look particularly attractive today based on a combination of valuation, dividend stability, and economic moat ratings.
Here’s a little bit about each stock. All data is as of June 15, 2026.
PepsiCo PEP
- Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.85
- Economic Moat Rating: Wide
- Capital Allocation Rating: Exemplary
- Forward Dividend Yield: 4.10%
Our first dividend king to buy is Pepsi. This wide-moat company’s portfolio of beverage and snack brands has been facing headwinds owing to consumer belt-tightening and changing tastes toward healthier fare. But we think the company’s efforts to improve its value proposition to consumers are starting to bear fruit, says Morningstar senior analyst Kris Inton. “With a solid balance sheet, plenty of liquidity, and strong free cash flow generation, we expect the company to have sufficient financial resources to weather macroeconomic volatilities,” he adds.
While Pepsi’s current payout ratio (a measure of the portion of a company’s earnings that it’s returning to shareholders via dividend payments) approaches 90% versus 64% during the past five years, Inton expects the payout ratio to stabilize in the low 70s over the next decade, with the dividend payment growing at a mid-single-digit pace annually. The stock of this dividend king is trading 15% below Morningstar’s $169 fair value estimate.
Review Pepsi’s dividend history.
S&P Global SPGI
- Morningstar Price/Fair Value: 0.79
- Economic Moat Rating: Wide
- Capital Allocation Rating: Exemplary
- Forward Dividend Yield: 0.91%
The second-best dividend king to buy is S&P Global. The firm provides data and benchmarks to capital and commodity market participants and lays claim to the largest credit rating agency in the world. S&P Global stock has had a tough year, as worries about how artificial intelligence could disrupt the business weigh on shares. For its part, S&P Global views AI efficiency as a contributing factor to operating margin expansion. And Morningstar thinks concerns about the impact on S&P’s business are likely overblown. “AI may not be a net negative if it increases data usage, as AI makes it easier to analyze data,” notes Morningstar analyst Rajiv Bhatia. In fact, Morningstar recently reiterated its wide moat rating on S&P Global after evaluating the risk that AI poses to it and other capital markets information services and software companies.
On the dividend front, we think S&P Global’s management team has done an exemplary job of allocating capital and can therefore comfortably support the dividend. “With a highly free cash flow generative business model and conservative capitalization, we view the firm’s balance sheet health as strong,” adds Bhatia. The company’s target dividend payout ratio is 20% to 30%. S&P Global stock is trading 21% below our $530 fair value estimate.
Review S&P Global’s dividend history.
The Best Dividend Kings to Buy: Quick Compare
All data is as of June 15, 2026.
The Best Dividend Kings: How We Chose Them
To make our list of the best dividend kings to buy, we focused on a few key traits.
- The company earns a Morningstar Economic Moat Rating of wide. From Morningstar’s perspective, a wide moat helps protect a company’s dividend. According to Morningstar’s Conover, “When we think about dividends, it’s pretty rare for firms to cut dividends, but it can happen. But firms with economic moats, those profits are protected. And so the likelihood for a dividend cut or even decreasing dividends going forward is reduced as firms have really strong competitive positioning, a positioning that we would recognize with an economic moat. So, I think when you look at dividends, and you think about an economic moat, when you overlay those two, it sets you up for a little bit more security on those dividends.”
- The company earns a Morningstar Capital Allocation Rating of Exemplary. This rating summarizes how well company leadership has managed its capital, reflecting how sound the balance sheet is, how effective investments in the company have been, and whether the company’s distributions are appropriate. By extension, a company with an exemplary capital allocation rating that prioritizes dividends should be able to deliver dividend stability.
- The company’s stock is trading well below Morningstar’s fair value estimate. Given that their long histories of dividend growth are prized by investors, the stocks of the highest-quality dividend kings often trade above their fair values. But from where we sit, valuation matters for dividend investors; we think trying to maximize total return, not just income, is the better strategy.
Dividend Kings vs. Dividend Aristocrats
While dividend kings have a history of growing their dividends for 50 consecutive years or more, dividend aristocrats have increased their payouts for 25 years or longer. Dividend kings are therefore a more exclusive subset of dividend aristocrats.
A full list of dividend aristocrats can easily be found in ProShares S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats ETF NOBL, a passive exchange-traded fund that tracks the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats index. An “official” list of dividend kings is tougher to find; there are no high-profile indexes or managed products tracking dividend kings. Dividends.com maintains a list of dividend kings.
Looking for More Dividend Investments?
Dividend kings and dividend aristocrats are just two types of equity investments that investors can use to generate income. Other stock-related ideas for income include:
Real estate investment trusts: REITs must pay out 90% of their taxable income to shareholders as dividends. As a result of their legal structure, REITs typically offer attractive yields. To find REITs that look undervalued today, see our list of The Best REITs to Buy. And if you’d prefer to get exposure to REITs via a managed product, review our Best REIT ETFs list.
Dividend ETFs: Speaking of ETFs, there are many good ETFs that focus on dividend-paying stocks. They’re solid choices for income investors who’d rather leave the individual stock selection to a professional. Find some ideas to research further on our list of Top High-Dividend ETFs.
Other dividend stocks: Just because a stock hasn’t raised its dividend for 25 or 50 straight years doesn’t mean it’s a dividend dud. High-quality dividend-paying companies with sound balance sheets may be worth considering, too. Our monthly Best Dividend Stocks list is a good place to start.