The Outlook for S&P 500 Dividends in September 2025

The outlook for the S&P 500′s dividends in the current and remaining quarters of 2025 has changed in the month since we presented our previous snapshot of their future. They have changed for both the worse and for the better since we took that snapshot just over a month ago.

The change for the worse applies to the current quarter of 2025-Q3, while the change for the better holds for the fourth and final quarter of 2025.

Our last snapshot of the CME Group’s S&P 500 Quarterly Dividend Index’ Futures quotes was taken on 13 August 2025. The new snapshot is from Monday, 15 August 2025. Here is our text summary of how they changed:

• 2025-Q3: Decrease of $0.17, declining to $19.64 per share
• 2025-Q4: Increase of $0.03, rising to $19.88 per share

The following animated chart shows how expectations for the S&P 500′s quarterly dividends per share changed in the month from 13 August 2025 to 15 September 2025. If you’re reading this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, you may need to click through to our site to see the animation.

As a special bonus, here’s how the S&P 500′s dividends expected in the first quarter of 2026 changed!

• 2026-Q1: Increase of $0.20, rising to $20.94 per share

If that expectation holds, it will represent a year-over-year increase of $0.61 per share, or three percent, over 2025-Q1′s finalized $20.33 per share.

More About Dividend Futures Data

How changes in the outlook for dividends at specific points of time in the future contribute to changes in stock prices is described by this math.

For this series, we have been taking a snapshot of the CME Group’s S&P 500 quarterly dividend futures data shortly after the second or third week of each month.

Dividend futures indicate the amount of dividends per share to be paid out over the period covered by each quarter’s dividend futures contracts, which start on the day after the preceding quarter’s dividend futures contracts expire and end on the third Friday of the month ending the indicated quarter. So for example, as determined by dividend futures contracts, the now “current” quarter of 2025-Q3 began on Saturday, 21 June 2025 and will end on this Friday, 19 September 2025. From the perspective of dividend futures, 2025-Q4 will become the current quarter on Saturday, 22 September 2025.

Because dividend futures are tied to options contracts that run on this schedule, that makes these figures different from the quarterly dividends per share figures that are reported by Standard and Poor. S&P reports the amount of dividends per share paid out during regular calendar quarters after the end of each quarter. This term mismatch accounts for the differences in dividends reported by both sources, with the biggest differences between the two typically seen in the first and fourth quarters of each year.

Image Credit: Microsoft Copilot Designer. Prompt: “A crystal ball with the word ‘SP 500′ written inside it”. And ‘Dividends’ written above it, which we added.