Most goals in the FIFA World Cup: Mbappe’s 22 tops the all-time list

Kylian Mbappe has scored the most goals in FIFA World Cup history, with 22 in 22 matches. Lionel Messi is second on 21 and Miroslav Klose, who held the record for twelve years, is now third on 16.

The order at the top of this list changed completely at the 2026 World Cup in North America, where Mbappe scored 10 and Messi 8. All figures below are current to August 2026 and include that tournament, the 23rd edition since 1930.

Most goals in the FIFA World Cup: the all-time list

No.	Player	Country	Goals	Matches	Goals per match	World Cups
1.	Kylian Mbappe	France	22	22	1.00	2018, 2022, 2026
2.	Lionel Messi	Argentina	21	34	0.62	2006-2026
3.	Miroslav Klose	Germany	16	24	0.67	2002-2014
4.	Ronaldo Nazario	Brazil	15	19	0.79	1998-2006
5=	Gerd Muller	West Germany	14	13	1.08	1970, 1974
5=	Harry Kane	England	14	18	0.78	2018, 2022, 2026
7.	Just Fontaine	France	13	6	2.17	1958
8.	Pele	Brazil	12	14	0.86	1958-1970
9=	Sandor Kocsis	Hungary	11	5	2.20	1954
9=	Jurgen Klinsmann	West Germany / Germany	11	17	0.65	1990-1998
9=	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal	11	27	0.41	2006-2026
12=	Helmut Rahn	West Germany	10	10	1.00	1954, 1958
12=	Gary Lineker	England	10	12	0.83	1986, 1990
12=	Gabriel Batistuta	Argentina	10	12	0.83	1994-2002
12=	Teofilo Cubillas	Peru	10	13	0.77	1970-1982
12=	Thomas Muller	Germany	10	19	0.53	2010-2022

Every figure in the goals-per-match column is simply goals divided by matches, rounded to two places, so the table can be checked without leaving the page. Where players are level on goals, the one who needed fewer matches is placed first.

What the 2026 World Cup did to this list

No single tournament has ever rearranged the top of this table like the last one. Four of the sixteen names above moved, and two of them moved past everybody.

Player	Before 2026	Scored in 2026	Now
Kylian Mbappe	12	10	22
Lionel Messi	13	8	21
Harry Kane	8	6	14
Cristiano Ronaldo	8	3	11

Mbappe took the Golden Boot with those 10 goals, becoming the first player to win the award at two World Cups in a row, and he did it despite France going out in the semi-finals and then losing the third-place play-off. Messi’s eight were not quite enough to catch him: the pair were level on eight with two matches left, and Mbappe scored twice in the play-off defeat to England while Messi was kept off the scoresheet as Argentina lost the final to Spain.

Klose had held the record since 2014, when his 16th goal came in the 7-1 semi-final win over Brazil. He held it for twelve years and then lost it to two players in the same tournament.

Mbappe’s 22 in 22 is the number to look at

The raw total is not the most striking thing about Mbappe’s record. It is that he has played exactly as many World Cup matches as he has scored World Cup goals — 22 and 22, a rate of precisely one a game.

Nobody else near the top of the list is close to that. Messi needed 34 matches and six tournaments to reach 21; Klose needed 24 matches, Cristiano Ronaldo 27. Mbappe has done it in three tournaments, and he was 27 when the 2026 final was played, so he could plausibly appear at another one.

Five men on the list scored at a rate of one a game or better, and Mbappe is the only one of them from the modern game. The others are Sandor Kocsis in 1954, Helmut Rahn across 1954 and 1958, Just Fontaine in 1958 and Gerd Muller across 1970 and 1974.

Just Fontaine’s 13 in one tournament is the record nobody gets near

The all-time list is one record; the single-tournament mark is another, and it has not moved since 1958. Just Fontaine scored 13 goals in six matches for France at that World Cup, which is his entire World Cup career — he never played at another one.

Sixty-eight years later it still stands, and 2026 shows why. Mbappe’s 10 goals were enough to win the Golden Boot and to lift him past every scorer in the tournament’s history, and he still finished three short of what Fontaine managed in a single month. Only Kocsis has come closer, with 11 in 1954.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s World Cup record does not match his international one

The most interesting name on the list may be the one in ninth. Cristiano Ronaldo is the leading goalscorer in international football with 146 goals for Portugal, comfortably a world record — and yet at World Cups he has 11 goals from six tournaments and 27 matches.

That works out at 0.41 a game, the lowest rate of anyone in the table above. He has played more World Cup matches than anyone on the list except Messi, and scored at less than half Mbappe’s rate. It is the clearest illustration on this page of how differently the two records read: one rewards two decades of qualifiers and friendlies, the other is decided in seven matches every four years.

Where Pele and the older names sit now

Pele has 12 World Cup goals in 14 matches at a rate of 0.86, which puts him eighth. He has slipped down the order as Mbappe, Messi and Kane have climbed it, which says more about them than about him — his own World Cup records, including three winners’ medals and the youngest goalscorer in the tournament’s history, are untouched.

The 1950s are heavily represented near the top of the goals-per-match column for a reason: those tournaments were far shorter, goals came at a much higher rate than they do now, and a forward in form could build a career total in a handful of matches. Kocsis played five World Cup matches in his life and scored 11 times in them. Gerd Muller’s 14 in 13 across 1970 and 1974 is the highest total managed by anyone who averaged better than a goal a game.

Who has scored the most goals in the FIFA World Cup?

Kylian Mbappe, with 22 goals in 22 matches across the 2018, 2022 and 2026 tournaments. He passed Miroslav Klose’s mark of 16 during the 2026 World Cup in North America.

Has anyone scored more World Cup goals than Miroslav Klose?

Yes, two players. Klose’s 16 stood as the record from 2014 until 2026, when both Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi went past it in the same tournament. Klose is now third.

What is the record for most goals in a single World Cup?

13, by France’s Just Fontaine in 1958, in only six matches. Sandor Kocsis scored 11 in 1954, and Gerd Muller and Kylian Mbappe are the only others to reach double figures at a single tournament, with 10 each in 1970 and 2026. The full list of tournament top scorers is on our page of World Cup Golden Boot winners, and goals scored in the final itself are counted separately on our most goals in World Cup finals page.

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