Harry Kane scored 73 goals without winning the Champions League or the World Cup, and he has still won the Ballon d’Or
England’s captain finished ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal at the London Palladium, the first time the ceremony has been held outside France.
Oct 27, 2026
Harry Kane has won the Ballon d’Or. The Bayern Munich and England striker was named the best men’s player in the world at the London Palladium on Monday night, with Kylian Mbappé second and Lamine Yamal third.
He is the first Englishman to win it since Michael Owen in 2001, and the fifth in all after Stanley Matthews, Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Owen. He is also the first Bayern player to win it since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981. Before this, his best finish was 10th.
The season that won it
The voting covered 2025-26, and Kane spent it scoring at a rate few players have ever managed. He scored 61 goals in 51 games for Bayern, more than any Bayern player has scored in a season since Gerd Müller in 1972-73. Add England and it comes to 73 goals in 65 matches.
Only Lionel Messi has scored more in a season while playing in one of Europe’s big five leagues, with 82 for Barcelona and Argentina in 2011-12. Kane’s 73 also won him the Gerd Müller Trophy, the award for the season’s top scorer, earlier in the evening.
He did it without one of the big trophies. Bayern won the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal, with Kane scoring a hat-trick in the 3-0 cup final win over Stuttgart, but they went out of the Champions League in the semi-finals. England also lost in the World Cup semi-finals. Yamal won the World Cup with Spain, and in the end that was not enough.
“I was never the person that people thought was going to be the superstar”
Kane is 33, and he talked afterwards about how long it took to get here. “I was never the person that people thought was going to be the superstar like some of the guys now,” he told DAZN. “I had to bide my time and work hard.”
On stage he thanked Tottenham, the club where he made his name, and said being in London “felt like a good omen”. He also had a message for his Bayern coach Vincent Kompany, who was taken ill last week and could not attend, although he was on the shortlist for men’s coach of the year. “I know he’s at home, or still in the hospital. I wish you well, and I hope this has given you a bit of energy,” Kane said.
It was the first Ballon d’Or ceremony ever held outside France. Organisers took it to London to honour Matthews, who won the first edition in 1956.
Yamal wins the Kopa again, and Messi is fifth
Yamal did not leave empty-handed. The 19-year-old won the Kopa Trophy for the best young player for the third year running, and then said it should have gone to his Barcelona team-mate. “This one should have been for Pau Cubarsí,” he said. Cubarsí finished second in that vote.
In the main list, Rodri was fourth and Messi, now at Inter Miami, was fifth. Last year’s winner, Ousmane Dembélé, dropped to seventh, one place behind his PSG team-mate Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. Erling Haaland was eighth, Bayern’s Michael Olise ninth and PSG’s Fabián Ruiz 10th.
Spanish names took most of the other prizes. Alexia Putellas won the women’s Ballon d’Or for a third time, Luis de la Fuente was men’s coach of the year after Spain’s World Cup, and Unai Simón won the Yashin Trophy for goalkeepers. PSG were men’s club of the year again, and Bukayo Saka received the Sócrates Award for his charity work with Big Shoe.
Seventy years after Matthews won the first one, the trophy has gone back to an English player, in London. Yamal is 19 and will get plenty more chances. Kane had to wait until he was 33 for his.