Investor Insights: Top FTSE Dividend Stocks, Glencore’s Rally, Your 2026-2027 Tax Calendar

In This Week’s Newsletter

The next few weeks are set to be busy for UK income investors, with plenty of big companies reporting their full-year earnings for 2025 and declaring their dividends. Among them, Lloyds Banking Group LLOY, GSK GSK, Unilever ULVR, NatWest NWG, and multinational drinks brand Diageo DGE. The results of this process will allow investors to calculate dividend payouts for the full calendar year of 2025, a 12-month period in which the UK FTSE 100 hit repeated record highs despite a weaker dollar and serious international uncertainty. Read James Gard and Sunniva Kolostyak’s latest roundup on the Top FTSE 100 UK Dividend Paying Stocks below.

If it was geopolitics and currency exposure that posed the biggest risk to FTSE 100 performance last year, it was defense expansion, banking confidence, and AI bubble fears that helped keep its momentum as sentiment waxed and waned—not to mention the potential emergence of a new commodities “supercycle.” One mining company, Glencore GLEN, is already surging in 2026 and is, this week, the focus of our regular Stock of The Week video. As Rio Tinto RIO weighs up whether it will make a bid for its London-listed peer before its upcoming deadline, watch this short film for the full Morningstar take on Glencore.

Speaking of deadlines, the cut-off for submitting online tax returns and self-assessment tax payments is fast approaching: Jan. 31, 2026. Ahead of that, we’ve got an updated forward look at all the tax changes happening this year and beyond, covering dividend taxation, changes to the ISA cash limits, and an overhaul of inheritance tax in pensions due in April next year.

Next week, look out for our full preview of the Bank of England’s first rates decision of 2026, alongside the start of UK earnings season and a deep dive into UK investment exposure to SpaceX.