Zara’s billionaire founder will receive a record €3.23bn (£2.8bn) dividend from the world’s biggest fashion retailer this year.
Amancio Ortega, who still controls 59% of Spain’s Inditex and whose daughter Marta Ortega Pérez is now president, will receive half of his dividend in May and the other half in November, like other shareholders.
Inditex, which owns a number of retail chains including Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Pull&Bear, Stradivarius and Oysho, said on Wednesday it would increase its dividend by 4% after “solid operating performance” in 2025.
The payout narrowly exceeds the €3.1 billion dividend given to Ortega last year. He has a net worth of around $126.7bn (£94bn), making him the 15th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Sales at Inditex, which has 5,460 stores in more than 90 countries and employs more than 160,000 people, rose 3.2% to €39.9 billion in the year to January 31, 2026. Pre-tax profit rose 5.8% to €8 billion, according to results published on Wednesday.
Although Inditex closed 103 stores around the world last year, it moved its units to larger outlets, which meant its total retail space increased.
Ortega, who turns 90 this month, launched Zara from a small store in La Coruña, Galicia, northern Spain, in 1975. He is still regularly seen at Inditex’s head office chatting with staff. He was a local clothing manufacturer who went from being a delivery driver at a shirt store to opening his first store.
In previous years, Ortega has used his dividend payout to finance property purchases, including The Post building in London, the Haughwout building in New York and the Southeast Financial Center in Miami, according to Bloomberg.
Ortega was reportedly quick to spend last year’s dividend on property against Spain’s wealth tax. It is the only EU country to have a full-fledged wealth tax, and residents are exempt from the tax if they invest their income within a 12-month period in assets considered “economic activity.”
Inditex said on Wednesday it expected to open 5% more store space this year and continue growing online. It said it had started the new year strongly, with sales up 9% between February 1 and March 8, excluding the impact of exchange rates.
Inditex told analysts it had not yet seen any disruption to stock flow due to disruption in the Middle East, which typically acts as a hub for fashion arriving from producing countries such as Bangladesh.
The group plans to bring Lefties, its cut-price brand, to the UK this year and has also been scouting more sites for The Apartment, a concept that combines premium Zara clothing and homewares in a store designed like an influencer’s home. Inditex also opens new stores in the US, Norway and Denmark, and its first store on the Caribbean island of Curacao.
Inditex has been investing in technology, launching a virtual try-on system based on artificial intelligence that allows online shoppers to create an avatar from their own photos and generate images of it using real products.
