The Ballon d’Or, organised by the France Football magazine, is awarded each year to the world’s best footballer. Since 2022 it has judged a full football season rather than a calendar year.
The 2026 Ballon d’Or is the 70th edition, and it will be handed out on Monday 26 October 2026 in London — the first time in the award’s history that the ceremony has been staged outside Paris. It covers the 2025-26 season through to the World Cup, so a summer in North America counts towards it.
Below is the complete list of every men’s winner since 1956 and every Ballon d’Or Feminin winner since 2018, updated through the 2025 awards, plus how the voting actually works and why reading the list as a straight ranking of the best players in history does not hold up.
The Ballon d’Or award is the brainchild of former France footballer and journalist Gabriel Hanot, who is also credited for conceiving the Ligue 1 championship in France and co-founding the European Cup – now known as the UEFA Champions League – with L’Equipe colleague Jacques Ferran.
Instituted in 1956, the Ballon d’Or award was initially considered as the European Footballer of the Year award as it was only open to European players at European clubs.
However, the rules for eligible winners of the Ballon d’Or award were amended when AC Milan’s George Weah became the first non-European Ballon d’Or winner in 1995. Two years later in 1997, Brazil’s Ronaldo was the first South American winner of the Ballon d’Or award.
Since 2007, the eligibility to win the Ballon d’Or award has been expanded to all players from every continent.
Between 2010 and 2015, the France Football magazine and FIFA formed a partnership where the Ballon d’Or would merge with the FIFA World Player of the Year award to be known as the FIFA Ballon d’Or.
In 2018, the France Football magazine introduced the Ballon d’Or Feminin award for the best woman football player in the world.
Since its introduction in 1956, the Ballon d’Or has been cancelled just once in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Who was the first Ballon d’Or winner?
Stanley Matthews won the first-ever Ballon d’Or award in 1956. Known for his exquisite close control, great dribbling ability and intelligence on the field, Matthews inspired a famous come-from-behind 4-3 victory for Blackpool in the 1953 FA Cup final against Bolton Wanderers. The fixture later came to be known as the ‘Matthews final’.
He also finished as a runner-up in the English top-flight with Blackpool in the 1955-56 season en-route to becoming the first Ballon d’Or winner.
Who won the first Ballon d’Or as a female football player?
Norway striker Ada Hegerberg is the first winner of the Ballon d’or Feminin award that was introduced in 2018.
Hegerberg, then 23, finished as the leading goal-scorer for Olympique Lyonnais in the 2017-18 Division 1 Féminine (31 goals) as well as in the UEFA Women’s Champions League (15 goals).
How is the winner of the Ballon d’Or decided?
By a jury of journalists, and the rules were rewritten in 2022 after one of the most disputed results in the award’s history.
Each winner is picked from a 30-player shortlist. The men’s award is voted on by 100 journalists, one from each of the top 100 nations in the FIFA world rankings; the Feminin award by 50 journalists, one from each of the top 50 in the women’s rankings. Every voter ranks ten players, and the places are weighted 15, 12, 10, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 point.
Three criteria are published, in this order:
| 1 | Individual performance, and how decisive and impressive the player was |
| 2 | Team performance and the trophies won across the season |
| 3 | Class, and the player’s sense of fair play |
The interesting part is what is missing. Until 2022 a fourth criterion covered the player’s career as a whole, and it was dropped deliberately. France Football’s editor-in-chief at the time, Pascal Ferre, explained the change as treating the Ballon d’Or as an open competition rather than a preserve — a rewrite that followed Lionel Messi’s contested seventh win over Robert Lewandowski in 2021.
Two other changes landed at the same time. The award moved from a calendar year to a football season, and the jury was cut to the top 100 countries on the reasoning that a smaller, better-informed panel produces fewer stray votes. Since 2024 the ceremony has been co-organised by UEFA, though France Football keeps the name and the voting system.
The margins can be very fine. In 2024 Rodri beat Vinicius Junior by 1,170 points to 1,129 — 41 points — with 49 countries putting Rodri first and 35 choosing Vinicius. Real Madrid boycotted the ceremony.
The Ballon d’Or has not always been the same award
This matters before you read the list as a ranking of the best players in history, because the pool of people allowed to win it has changed three times.
| 1956-1994 | European Footballer of the Year — open only to European players at European clubs |
| 1995-2006 | Open to any player at a European club. George Weah won first in 1995; Ronaldo became the first South American winner in 1997 |
| 2007 onwards | Open to players anywhere in the world |
| 2010-2015 | Merged with the FIFA World Player of the Year award and known as the FIFA Ballon d’Or |
So Pele and Diego Maradona never won one, and not because the voters passed them over. Neither was eligible. Until 1995 the award was restricted by nationality, not just by club, so Maradona’s seven years at Napoli and two at Barcelona counted for nothing — he was Argentine. Pele never played in Europe at all. Any reading of this list as “the best player of each year” has that hole in it for the first four decades.
Who has won the most Ballon d’Or?
Lionel Messi has won the most Ballon d’Or awards in history, with eight wins, three more than rival Cristiano Ronaldo. The Argentina captain won four successive Ballon d’Or awards between 2009 and 2012 and was the first player to win the FIFA Ballon d’Or.
The Barcelona icon, who currently plays for Inter Miami, won a record eighth Ballon d’Or in 2023 after he helped Argentina claim the 2022 FIFA World Cup. That remains his last: Rodri took the 2024 award and Ousmane Dembele the 2025 one, and 2024 and 2025 were won back-to-back by players who had never won it before.
Behind Messi’s eight and Cristiano Ronaldo’s five, three men are on three: Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten. Platini’s came in consecutive years, 1983 to 1985.
Ballon d’Or winners list
| Year | Winner | Team | Points |
| 1956 | Stanley Matthews | Blackpool | 47 |
| 1957 | Alfredo Di Stéfano | Real Madrid | 72 |
| 1958 | Raymond Kopa | Real Madrid | 71 |
| 1959 | Alfredo Di Stéfano | Real Madrid | 80 |
| 1960 | Luis Suárez | Barcelona | 54 |
| 1961 | Omar Sívori | Juventus | 46 |
| 1962 | Josef Masopust | Dukla Prague | 65 |
| 1963 | Lev Yashin | Dynamo Moscow | 73 |
| 1964 | Denis Law | Manchester United | 61 |
| 1965 | Eusébio | Benfica | 67 |
| 1966 | Bobby Charlton | Manchester United | 81 |
| 1967 | Flórián Albert | Ferencváros | 68 |
| 1968 | George Best | Manchester United | 61 |
| 1969 | Gianni Rivera | Milan | 83 |
| 1970 | Gerd Müller | Bayern Munich | 77 |
| 1971 | Johan Cruyff | Ajax | 116 |
| 1972 | Franz Beckenbauer | Bayern Munich | 81 |
| 1973 | Johan Cruyff | Barcelona | 96 |
| 1974 | Johan Cruyff | Barcelona | 116 |
| 1975 | Oleg Blokhin | Dynamo Kyiv | 122 |
| 1976 | Franz Beckenbauer | Bayern Munich | 91 |
| 1977 | Allan Simonsen | Borussia Mönchengladbach | 74 |
| 1978 | Kevin Keegan | Hamburger SV | 87 |
| 1979 | Kevin Keegan | Hamburger SV | 118 |
| 1980 | Karl-Heinz Rummenigge | Bayern Munich | 122 |
| 1981 | Karl-Heinz Rummenigge | Bayern Munich | 106 |
| 1982 | Paolo Rossi | Juventus | 115 |
| 1983 | Michel Platini | Juventus | 110 |
| 1984 | Michel Platini | Juventus | 110 |
| 1985 | Michel Platini | Juventus | 127 |
| 1986 | Igor Belanov | Dynamo Kyiv | 84 |
| 1987 | Ruud Gullit | Milan | 106 |
| 1988 | Marco van Basten | Milan | 129 |
| 1989 | Marco van Basten | Milan | 129 |
| 1990 | Lothar Matthäus | Internazionale | 137 |
| 1991 | Jean-Pierre Papin | Marseille | 141 |
| 1992 | Marco van Basten | Milan | 98 |
| 1993 | Roberto Baggio | Juventus | 142 |
| 1994 | Hristo Stoichkov | Barcelona | 210 |
| 1995 | George Weah | Milan | 144 |
| 1996 | Matthias Sammer | Borussia Dortmund | 144 |
| 1997 | Ronaldo | Internazionale | 222 |
| 1998 | Zinedine Zidane | Juventus | 244 |
| 1999 | Rivaldo | Barcelona | 219 |
| 2000 | Luís Figo | Real Madrid | 197 |
| 2001 | Michael Owen | Liverpool | 176 |
| 2002 | Ronaldo | Real Madrid | 169 |
| 2003 | Pavel Nedvěd | Juventus | 190 |
| 2004 | Andriy Shevchenko | Milan | 175 |
| 2005 | Ronaldinho | Barcelona | 225 |
| 2006 | Fabio Cannavaro | Real Madrid | 173 |
| 2007 | Kaká | Milan | 444 |
| 2008 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Manchester United | 446 |
| 2009 | Lionel Messi | Barcelona | 473 |
| 2010 | Lionel Messi | Barcelona | 22.65% |
| 2011 | Lionel Messi | Barcelona | 47.88% |
| 2012 | Lionel Messi | Barcelona | 41.60% |
| 2013 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Real Madrid | 27.99% |
| 2014 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Real Madrid | 37.66% |
| 2015 | Lionel Messi | Barcelona | 41.33% |
| 2016 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Real Madrid | 745 |
| 2017 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Real Madrid | 946 |
| 2018 | Luka Modrić | Real Madrid | 753 |
| 2019 | Lionel Messi | Barcelona | 686 |
| 2021 | Lionel Messi | Paris Saint-Germain | 613 |
| 2022 | Karim Benzema | Real Madrid | 549 |
| 2023 | Lionel Messi | Paris Saint-Germain | – |
| 2024 | Rodri | Manchester City | 1170 |
| 2025 | Ousmane Dembele | Paris Saint-Germain | – |
Ballon d’Or Feminin winners list
| Year | Winner | Team | Points |
| 2018 | Ada Hegerberg | Lyon | 136 |
| 2019 | Megan Rapinoe | OL Reign | 230 |
| 2021 | Alexia Putellas | Barcelona | 186 |
| 2022 | Alexia Putellas | Barcelona | 164 |
| 2023 | Aitana Bonmatí | Barcelona | – |
| 2024 | Aitana Bonmatí | Barcelona | – |
| 2025 | Aitana Bonmatí | Barcelona | – |
Barcelona have supplied the winner every year since 2021 — Alexia Putellas twice, then Aitana Bonmati three times. Bonmati’s 2025 win, on 22 September in Paris, made her the first player to win the Feminin award three times, and she did it in consecutive years.
What to watch for at the 2026 Ballon d’Or
The 70th edition is on 26 October 2026 in London, and France Football usually publishes the 30-player shortlist in August, so the contenders are named roughly two months before the vote is announced.
The season it judges ran from the start of 2025-26 through the World Cup in North America, which is unusual weighting: a single summer tournament sits inside the same voting window as a whole club campaign. Spain won that World Cup, and Rodri took the Golden Ball as its best player — which would make him a two-time winner, something nobody but Messi has managed since Cristiano Ronaldo’s fifth in 2017. Paris Saint-Germain, meanwhile, retained the Champions League, the competition that carried Dembele to the 2025 award.
Nothing is decided until the ballots are in, and 2024 showed how close it can be. If you want the wider argument about where these awards sit in the all-time debate, we have pages on the GOAT of football and on who is the King of Football.
If you follow the outright markets around the ceremony and the European season, our guide to the best football betting sites in India compares the operators pricing them up.
Author: William Paul
Featured photo: FRANCK FIFE / AFP