This paper is concerned with the non-fragile distributed H∞ filtering problem for a class of discrete-time Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) systems with multiplicative gain variation. The multiplicative gain uncertainties reflecting the imprecision of the filter implementation are firstly described. Based on the fuzzy Lyapunov functional approach, a sufficient condition is presented such that the filtering error system is asymptotically stable with a prescribed H∞ performance level. The filter gain parameters are determined by solving an optimization problem. Application on the robotic manipulator is given to show the effectiveness of the proposed new design method.