When the ASX's ten biggest companies pay, and the five months none of them do

By Ryan Wimalasena · 25 September 2026 · 6 min read

Ask when the big Australian companies pay their dividends and you'll get a shrug and the word “twice”. Twice a year is right. It's the rest of the answer, which months and which weeks, that decides whether a portfolio built from the market's biggest names pays for anything in May.

So here are the dates: the two most recent dividends of each of the ten largest companies in the S&P/ASX 200, paid or already set to be paid. Together the ten are 49% of the index, which makes this close to the calendar of the market itself.

The calendar

Seven months get something. January, February, May, August and November get nothing from any of the ten. The payments aren't spread across the year so much as stacked into four heavy stretches: the end of March, the turn of June into July, the last week of September, and December.

The dates

Look at September. BHP pays on 23 September, Rio Tinto on 24 September, Woodside on 25 September and Commonwealth Bank on 29 September. March is the same shape: BHP, Commonwealth Bank, Wesfarmers and Woodside all pay between the 26th and the 31st. A portfolio leaning on the miners, energy and the biggest bank receives a large share of its half year inside seven days, and then waits.

Why the clusters

Nobody arranged it around your bills. The calendar is set by accounting years. Commonwealth Bank, BHP, Wesfarmers and CSL close their books at the end of June, report in February and August, and pay five to seven weeks later. Rio Tinto and Woodside run calendar years, which lands them on the same months from the other direction. NAB, Westpac and ANZ close in September and pay around July and December, and Macquarie, closing in March, pays in the same two months.

Every date above is a payment date, which matters, because the ex-dividend dates fall weeks earlier and a calendar built from ex-dates puts the money in the wrong month.

Four of the ten pay in US dollars

BHP, CSL, Rio Tinto and Woodside declare their dividends in US dollars. For an Australian holder the amount in Australian dollars isn't settled until close to payday; Rio Tinto, for one, converts at the rate seven days before payment. A dividend held flat in US cents can arrive up or down in Australian dollars for reasons nobody at the company chose, which is the same thing a foreign dividend does, arriving through an Australian share register.

What it means for a portfolio

If most of your income comes from these ten, your year has five quiet months and a handful of heavy weeks. That's fine as long as you know it. The trouble starts when the bills are monthly and the plan was built from an annual total, or when the money is meant to fund a pension that has to be paid by 30 June. Other kinds of holding can fill the gaps, which doesn't require monthly payers.

Where Guardian fits

Your calendar isn't this one. It's built from whatever you hold, in whatever proportions, and it moves when a company shifts its dates. Guardian builds it from each holding's recorded payment dates, and where a company hasn't published the next one yet, from its own history of paying, marked as an estimate. It lays out the next 12 months with the companies behind each one and the empty months left empty, and tells you when a company confirms a new date or amount.

Dividend Guardian provides information and estimates from public data, not personal financial advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to buy, hold or sell any company named. Payment dates are the companies' own, from their results announcements and dividend histories, and some fall after the date of writing; companies can and do change their dates. Index weights are from State Street's STW factsheet as at 31 August 2026. Guardian reports confirmed changes; it does not predict them.