The Permanent Fund earned a record $8.2 billion the Legislature can appropriate

The Alaska Permanent Fund closed fiscal 2026 with a record $8.2 billion in statutory net income, the realized earnings lawmakers can appropriate, up from $5.9 billion the year before. Nothing was appropriated for inflation-proofing, which protects the fund's principal against rising prices. Nothing has been since fiscal 2023.

Twelve transfers sent $3.8 billion to the state general fund during the year, and another $4 billion is committed to the fiscal 2027 draw. That leaves $10.6 billion uncommitted in the Earnings Reserve Account, the pot lawmakers draw on for dividends, state services and inflation-proofing.

General Counsel Chris Pope told the fund's audit committee that the account is subject to appropriation by simple majority, and that the Legislature "could spend a lot more of that money through an appropriation should they choose to." How much of the fund's earnings should go to dividends rather than to state services or to preserving the fund is the central fight in Juneau, and it is not the corporation's to settle. Executive Director Deven Mitchell said calculating the dividend belongs to the Legislature and the Department of Revenue.

By the broader measure that counts paper gains, the fund earned $10.1 billion, about 30 percent above the prior year and second only to fiscal 2022. It returned 12.42 percent and closed June 30 at $91.9 billion. Nearly $18 billion of that value is unrealized, and staff said about 46 percent of those gains sit in illiquid assets that will not be cashed out soon.

KPMG will issue a clean audit opinion, the best available, managing director Melissa Beedle told the committee in Juneau on Sept. 2, and auditors "also didn't identify any illegal acts or fraudulent activity" by fund management. The single uncorrected misstatement was a timing problem: about $260 million in private equity valuations arrived after the Aug. 18 cutoff, part of roughly $300 million in late reporting overall. That value lands in the fiscal 2027 statements instead.

Trustee Jason Brune said the balance leaves the fund well positioned, then added a caution: "one global financial crisis and it could swallow all of this."