Best Blue-Chip Dividend Stocks to Buy for 2026 and Beyond

two blue poker chips, stacked under a spotlight

It's said the best blue-chip dividend stocks never go out of style. True, they might tend to lag in up markets, but they're also likely to hold up better when everything is selling off.

"Blue-chip dividend stocks can usually endure economic downturns and market volatility," Saxo Group notes. "This resilience comes from their strong balance sheets, steady revenue, and often a global presence."

That defensive bias might just be what investors need amid increasingly stretched valuations for equities. Thanks in no small part to the Magnificent 7, the S&P 500 has returned nearly 40% since its April low. The riskier and "growthier" Nasdaq Composite gained more than 50% over the same span.

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The result is a stock market trading at "statistically expensive levels," according to BofA Global Research, with four valuation metrics – Market Cap to GDP, Price to Book, Price to Operating Cash Flow and Enterprise Value to Sales – sitting at record highs.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, due in part to its price-weighted construction, generated "only" 30% since the market bottomed this past spring, but that's also kept its valuation comparatively in check.

Although the very bluest of blue-chip dividend stocks have been collective laggards in this bull market, their defensive aspects could come in quite handy should sentiment start to sour.

Low-beta stocks underperform in up markets and outperform in down markets. As such, the best blue-chip dividend stocks can add ballast to a portfolio. Investors suffering anxiety over the return of "irrational exuberance" can probably see the appeal of such names.

After all, the economic outlook is becoming increasingly murky. Economists' median estimate puts the odds of recession over the next year at 33%. Separately, the New York Federal Reserve's yield-curve model assigns a 25% probability of recession hitting in the next 12 months.

Happily, Wall Street's top-rated blue-chip dividend stocks – with their impregnable balance sheets and rivers of free cash flow – are well positioned to generate income and deliver outperformance in the year ahead and beyond, analysts say.

How to find the best blue-chip dividend stocks

In order to find the best blue-chip dividend stocks to buy now, we started by screening all 30 Dow Jones stocks for Wall Street analysts' top-rated names.

Here's how the process works: S&P Global Market Intelligence surveys analysts' stock ratings and scores them on a five-point scale, where 1.0 equals Strong Buy and 5.0 means Strong Sell.

Any score of 2.5 or lower means that analysts, on average, rate the stock a Buy. The closer the score gets to 1.0, the stronger the Buy call. In other words, lower scores are better than higher scores.

The forward dividend yield on the Dow has fallen below 2%, so we further limited our screen to Dow dividend stocks with yields of more than 2%.

And so, without further ado, below please find the Dow dividend stocks yielding more than 2% that analysts like best. Note that the top-rated stock is one of the biggest positions in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway equity portfolio.

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Wall Street's top-rated blue-cip dividend stocks
Company (Ticker)	Dividend yield	Analysts' consensus recommendation score	Analysts' consensus recommendation
Coca-Cola (KO)	2.86%	1.61	Buy
Merck (MRK)	3.14%	1.90	Buy
UnitedHealth Group (UNH)	2.65%	1.93	Buy
Home Depot (HD)	2.42%	1.95	Buy
Procter & Gamble (PG)	2.93%	2.00	Buy
Nike (NKE)	2.47%	2.03	Buy
Cisco Systems (CSCO)	2.17%	2.04	Buy
Chevron (CVX)	4.17%	2.12	Buy
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ)	2.43%	2.16	Buy
Honeywell International (HON)	2.26%	2.19	Buy
McDonald's (MCD)	2.40%	2.22	Buy
Verizon Communications (VZ)	7.08%	2.29	Buy
Amgen (AMGN)	3.11%	2.34	Buy
International Business Machines (IBM)	2.22%	2.38	Buy

Dan Burrows is Kiplinger's senior investing writer, having joined the publication full time in 2016.

A long-time financial journalist, Dan is a veteran of MarketWatch, CBS MoneyWatch, SmartMoney, InvestorPlace, DailyFinance and other tier 1 national publications. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Consumer Reports and his stories have appeared in the New York Daily News, the San Jose Mercury News and Investor's Business Daily, among many other outlets. As a senior writer at AOL's DailyFinance, Dan reported market news from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.

Once upon a time – before his days as a financial reporter and assistant financial editor at legendary fashion trade paper Women's Wear Daily – Dan worked for Spy magazine, scribbled away at Time Inc. and contributed to Maxim magazine back when lad mags were a thing. He's also written for Esquire magazine's Dubious Achievements Awards.

In his current role at Kiplinger, Dan writes about markets and macroeconomics.

Dan holds a bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and a master's degree from Columbia University.

Disclosure: Dan does not trade individual stocks or securities. He is eternally long the U.S equity market, primarily through tax-advantaged accounts.