The causes and consequences of the social dimension of business practices have been usually neglected by accounting scholars. To date, the evidence about the relationship between Corporate Social Performance (CSP) and Corporate Financial Performance (CFP) is still mixed and sometimes contradictory. The aim of this study is to examine if the CSP is significantly associated with market-based CFP in the context of European listed non-financial firms in 2017–2022. Since the COVID-19 pandemic deeply influenced corporate behavior, emphasized the importance of the social dimension of human life and shaked the international economic balances, this study aims to further investigate the role of the COVID-19 pandemic in shaping the relationship between CSP and market-based CFP. Grounded on multiple theoretical perspectives, such as the stakeholder theory and the shareholder theory, the research hypotheses are tested through fixed-effects regression models on a sample of 743 European listed non-financial firms. While the results demonstrate that CSP is negatively associated with CFP, they also show that such relationship turns positive during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the pandemic has strongly influenced the market responses to corporate social commitment. Coherently with such inference, our additional analyses show that this positive relationship is stronger in industries particularly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic compared to less COVID-19-sensitive sectors. Overall, this research has theoretical and practical contributions to academic communities, policymakers, and practitioners.