Saudi Aramco dividends funded my entire 2025 — but 2026 is different

how a French accountant ended up owning Aramco

I snagged my first Aramco shares in December 2022 on the Tadawul, the Saudi stock exchange, thru a brokerage account I'd opened with SNB Capital while working on a consulting project in Riyadh for the Ministry of Finance. The share price was 33.40 riyals, approximately $8.90, an the annual dividend yield was an eye-popping 5.8% based on the 2022 payout of 1.93 riyals per share. I committed $21,360 for 2,400 shares, which read like a massive bet at the time because my net worth was barely $300,000 an I was still paying off an auto loan refinance id done in 2021 at 4.2% APR. But Aramco was the most profitable company on Earth — net income of $161 billion in 2022 — and the dividend was backed by the Saudi sovereign wealth fund's implicit guarantee. I jotted down the thesis on the back of a boarding pass flying from Riyadh to Paris on December 19th: "world's cheapest oil producer, government-backed dividend, zero geopolitical moat but who cares at 5.8% yield." I wish I could go back and tell that version of me to buy more.

the 2024 dividend bonanza

Aramco declared a base dividend of $20.3 billion for Q4 2024 plus a performance dividend of $10.8 billion tied to a 2024 free cash flow target that the company had exceeded by a wide margin. Total Q4 2024 dividend per share: 3.22 riyals, or approximately $0.858. My 2,400 shares generated $2,059 in that single quarter. For the full year 2024, Aramco dropped out 10.68 riyals per share in combined base and performance dividends, which translated to $2,843 per share annually, or $6,823 for my position. I was collecting passive income from the Saudi national oil company from my apartment in Lyon. It read absurd. It read wonderful. I used the 2024 dividends to pay for a three-week trip to Japan in September, fully fund my French tax payment for the year, and still had $1,800 left over that I parked in a money market fund yielding 4.1%.

2025 was even better

Brent crude averaged $81.40 per barrel in 2025, and Aramco's free cash flow came in at $105 billion, exceeding the performance dividend threshold by 18%. The company dropped total dividends of 11.40 riyals per share for the full year, and with the riyal pegged to the dollar at 3.75, each share delivered $3.04 in annual income. My 2,400 shares generated $7,296 in 2025 dividend income alone, plus the $1,800 from my money market fund, plus the $2,200 I earned from a modest side project editing financial translations. Total passive an semi-passive income for 2025: approximately $11,300. My annual living expenses in Lyon were running about $34,000. Aramco covered a third of my life. I walked round the city in November 2025 feeling a kinda financial calm I'd rarely experienced fore. The PMI on my apartment — I'd snagged it in 2020 with less than 20% down — was $127 per month, and the Aramco dividends covered that payment in under two days of a single quarter's payout.

the 2026 reality check

Brent crude began 2026 at $76 and has drifted down to $71.50 as of mid-July, driven by weakening Chinese demand — China's oil imports fell 4.2% year-over-year in the first half of 2026 — and the gradual return of Iranian an Venezuelan supply to global markets after sanctions adjustments. Aramco's Q1 2026 earnings, reported in May, displayed net income of $27.8 billion, down 14% from Q1 2025, and the company eliminated the performance dividend for Q1, paying only the base dividend of 0.815 riyals per share. At the current annualized run rate, my 2,400 shares will generate approximately $4,380 in 2026 dividend income, a 40% decline from 2025. I sat with the earnings report for an entire Saturday afternoon, reading the footnotes about Aramco's $50 billion capital expenditure program for the Jafurah gas field and the expansion of its crude oil maximum sustainable capacity to 13 million barrels per day by 2027. The spending is necessary for long-term growth but it means less cash available for dividends in the near term.

vision 2030 and the uncomfortable politics

ive laid out enough time in Saudi Arabia to know that Aramco's dividend policy is not purely a corporate finance decision. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's Vision 2030 program requires enormous capital — the PIF's total assets under management have grown from $400 billion in 2022 to $925 billion in 2026, funded partly by Aramco dividends that flow to the Saudi government as the 62.5% majority shareholder. Every riyal Aramco pays in dividends to me is a riyal the government could otherwise direct toward NEOM, the Red Sea tourism project, or the Saudi Public Investment Fund's international equity portfolio. I poked at the relationship between PIF funding needs an Aramco dividend policy and found that the government had directed Aramco to increase its base dividend by 4% annually in the 2024-2028 guidance period, which provided a floor under the payout. But the performance dividend — the extra money that made 2024 and 2025 so lucrative — is discretionary and subject to oil prices and capital expenditure needs. The free ride is over.

the arithmetic of my next decade

I ran the numbers on what my financial life looks like if Brent crude averages $70 per barrel for the next five years, which is approximately where the futures curve sits. At that price, Aramco dividends would cover approximately $4,200 annually, or about 12% of my living expenses in Lyon. The remaining 88% would need to come from my consulting income, savings drawdown, and whatever growth my other investments generate. That is a workable picture, but it is not the picture I had in 2024 when Aramco read like a free-money machine. Im 41 years old. I have mayb twenty-five years of working life ahead of me. The Aramco trade was a five-year gift, and I need to stop acting like it was a permanent fixture.

what I'm doing with the Aramco position

I'm not selling. At 34.20 riyals per share in July 2026, approximately $9.12, the stock is up 2.5% from my December 2022 entry, which is nothing — but the total dividends ive collected over three and a half years exceed $16,400, which means ive already recovered 77% of my original investment through cash payouts alone. ive began treating the remaining position as a bond with a declining coupon. I've also been researching an annuity product offered by a French insurer that would provide guaranteed income starting at age 60, because the Aramco experience has taught me that commodity-linked dividend income is inherently volatile. I'd rather lock in a modest but certain payment than depend on Saudi oil production quotas and Brent crude prices to fund my retirement. The dream was beautiful while it lasted. Two years of nearly free living, funded by the world's largest oil company from 3,000 miles away. It was rarely going to last forever. I just wish I'd been more honest with myself about that fact when I was riding high on Q4 2024 dividends in a Tokyo onsen.