Canada’s “Dividend All-stars” for 2026

Well, you can.

The kind of hubris a bull market engenders is exactly why dividend devotees do what they do. As equity investors, they love to see the value of their portfolios go up. But they’ve also been around the sun enough times to know that markets don’t always do that. By sticking to stocks that pay dividends, they ensure that their nest egg will still generate some income, in good years and bad.

Last year was a good one, in the dividend space as well as the broad market. The S&P/TSX Composite Dividend Index, a cap-weighted measure of all the 165 dividend-paying stocks in the S&P/TSX Composite, put up a total return of 28.5%—only a few points below the broader Composite index, but with a good deal less risk. 

Relatively speaking, the S&P/TSX Dividend Aristocrats Index, which holds 87 stocks that have maintained or raised their dividends in each of the past five years, posted a disappointing return of 19.2%. That illustrates how stock selection matters, and how high valuations can constrain returns in a bull market.

The best Canadian dividend stocks in 2026

So which dividend stocks should you own in 2026? You can just buy a dividend index fund, of course. We’d recommend a great many investors do that. But if you prefer to put in the work to build your own portfolio, our Dividend All-stars represent a good starting point, with a history of outperforming the benchmarks more often than not.

We took the 164 constituents of the S&P/TSX Composite that paid a dividend as of November 30, 2025, and ranked them according to three criteria: yield, stability and valuation. (Read here for the specifics behind our time-tested methodology.)

To further narrow down investors’ choices, we came up with 10-member A and B lists of stocks that posted the highest cumulative scores on all three criteria (listed below). We call these best of the best, listed below, our Canadian Dividend All-stars.

One obvious feature of our 2026 A list is that, with the sole exception of financial services stock EQ Bank Inc., it’s composed of resource companies—six oil and gas producers and three mining companies. 

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Our B team was only slightly more diversified, featuring two insurance companies, Fairfax Financial Holdings and Intact Financial Corp., and a consumer cyclical firm, Richilieu Hardware. Otherwise it was four miners, two energy producers, and a forest products company.

Why resource stocks look set to outperform

Investing coach Aman Raina, founder of Sage Investors, who once again ran the numbers to come up with our lists, explains this quirk in terms of the shareholder value commodity producers are generating relative to their market prices right now.

“Again, like last year, commodities dominated the top 10 and even the top 20. They have been in a higher cash-flow-generating cycle so have more flexibility to issue larger dividends each year,” Raina said. 

Raina also noted that the top-ranked stocks tended not to be those with the highest yields. “Higher-ranked stocks have lower yields but much stronger growth rates which gets rewarded in the methodology,” he said.

The concentration of the All-stars in commodity sectors offers investors a choice: just buy them all, in the hope of better-than-benchmark returns, or be selective, so as not to become overly weighted to notoriously volatile commodity sectors. For more ideas for stocks to add to your portfolio, take a look at our full list of the Top 100 Dividend Stocks in Canada for 2026. We also encourage investors to do their own due diligence to complement our findings, using the latest market information available.

After three consecutive years of ample gains, we’re hesitant to offer equity investors any promises for 2026. Still, dividend investors are less likely than broad-market investors to experience a loss and, even if markets falter, can expect little if any impact on the stream of income their holdings generate. And should overall markets keep on notching new highs as they did in 2025, dividend stocks should capture most of that upside, too.

The data: MoneySense’s Dividend All-stars for 2026

To view all the data in the table, slide the columns right or left using your fingers or mouse. You can filter or rearrange the rankings by using the search tool or clicking on column headings. You can also download the data to your device in Excel, CSV, and PDF formats.

Best dividends A list

Best dividends B list

Read more about investing:

• The MoneySense Glossary for personal finance and investing terms—for Canadians

• The best TFSAs in Canada
• The best ETFs in Canada

About Michael McCullough

Michael is a financial writer and editor in Duncan, B.C. He’s a former managing editor of Canadian Business and editorial director of Canada Wide Media. He also writes for The Globe and Mail and BCBusiness.

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About Aman Raina, MBA

Aman Raina is an Investment Coach at Sage Investors and the founder of Aging Parent Finances. He teaches and guides people how to make more successful investment decisions so that they can achieve financial freedom with confidence.

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