GJ 526 (Lalande 25372, Wolf 498) is a red dwarf star in the northern constellation of Boötes. It has an apparent visual magnitude of 8.5, which is too faint to be seen with the naked eye. Based upon an annual parallax shift of 0.184 arc seconds as measured by the Hipparcos satellite, this system is 5.43pc from Earth.
This star is known at least from 1801, when it was included to Lalande's stellar catalogue Histoire céleste française. In 1847 edition of Lalande's catalogue by Francis Baily it was assigned number 25372, since it sometimes designated as Lalande 25372 or LAL 25372.
High proper motion of this star and its large parallax were known at least from 1911, when Frank Schlesinger published a paper where he announced its parallax and mentioned its proper motion value of 2.3 arcsec. In 1919, German astronomer Max Wolf included GJ 526 in his catalogue of high proper motion stars, giving it the identifier 498.
GJ 526 is a flare star, which means it undergoes sporadic increases in brightness of up to 1–6 magnitudes. It is a main sequence red dwarf with a stellar classification of M1.5 V. GJ 526 is smaller than the Sun, with 47% of the mass and 49% of the radius. It shines with just 3.6% of the luminosity of the Sun, with its stellar atmosphere radiating at an effective temperature of 3,678 K.
GJ 526 has been examined for an excess of radiation in the infrared. The presence of an infrared excess can be taken as an indication of a debris disk orbiting the star. However, no such excess was discovered around GJ 526.