Disney banked its biggest-ever profit payout from a non-US theme park last year as part of a lucrative deal with the Chinese government, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Recently filed accounts show that The Walt Disney Company’s theme park in Shanghai paid out £43.1million to one of the US conglomerate’s UK-based subsidiaries in 2025, up from £41.8million the previous year.

Shanghai Disneyland, which opened its doors in 2016, is the entertainment giant’s third biggest park behind its resorts in Orlando, Florida, and Paris.

The 963-acre complex on the outskirts of the city comprises two hotels, a lake and an entertainment district in addition to the fairytale-themed park.

Unlike Disney’s other theme parks, which it controls outright, the US giant owns less than half of the Shanghai resort, with the majority stake controlled by China’s state-owned Shanghai Shendi Group.

Disney has only a 43 per cent share in the firm that owns the resort with the remaining 57 per cent in Shendi’s hands.

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Disney also controls 70 per cent of a management company running the park.

New accounts reveal that WD Holdings (Shanghai), the obscurely named subsidiary that controls Disney’s stake in the Shanghai park, paid £43million of the £92million dividend to one of the American group’s UK-based companies last year, with the remainder funnelled to its other subsidiaries.

The Chinese state also pocketed a multi-million-pound dividend in line with its stake in the park.

The bumper payday stands in contrast to the situation in most of Disney’s other non-US theme parks, three of which either don’t pay a dividend or only small sums.

The revelation of its bumper dividend from China comes after Disney’s theme parks continued to serve as the media giant’s biggest cash cow last year, accounting for 57 per cent of its £13.2billion profit in 2025 and nearly 40 per cent of sales that year.

Disney will be hoping that the bumper payday will continue as it has yet to make back its share of the £4.5billion construction cost of the Shanghai park.

The growing demand for Disney’s theme parks and streaming service Disney+ provide a welcome boost to the company’s new chief executive, Josh D’Amaro, who took over in March this year from long-serving boss Bob Iger.

D’Amaro has pledged to plough even more cash into the firm’s theme parks, noting in May that visitor numbers had risen at its parks in the US despite mounting concerns that the rise in the cost of living would push consumers to cut back on holiday spending.