Harry Kane has won the 2026 men’s Ballon d’Or, becoming the first English player to claim the award since Michael Owen in 2001.
Kane, the Bayern Munich striker and England captain, was named the winner at the London Palladium on Monday night, at the 70th edition of the award and the first held outside Paris.
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The 33-year-old won the award ahead of Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé, the other leading contenders for the Ballon d’Or.
Yamal, 19, arrived as a World Cup and LaLiga winner with Barcelona, having scored 25 goals and set up 20 in 57 appearances, while Mbappé had become the World Cup’s all-time leading scorer during the tournament in North America.
Kane scored 61 goals in 51 appearances for Bayern and 12 for England, including six at the World Cup, where England reached the semi-finals and finished third. Bayern won the Bundesliga, the DFB-Pokal and the DFL-Supercup and reached the Champions League semi-final.
His 73 goals in 65 matches across club and country brought him the European Golden Shoe for the second time.
Kane collected the Gerd Müller Trophy as the world’s best striker earlier in the evening, presented by Alan Shearer. He said:
“It has been an amazing year for me; a year I feel great pride in what I have achieved. Without a doubt, this has been the best season I have ever had.”
The ceremony was preceded by confusion when the award’s official website briefly published articles naming Kane, Yamal and Mbappé as the winner. Organisers France Football said profiles prepared for all nominees had been published by mistake and should in no way be considered as an indication of the final results or rankings.
Kane is the fifth English winner of the Ballon d’Or, after Stanley Matthews, Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Owen, and the first Bayern player to take the prize since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981.
Recalling Harry Kane’s 2026 Ballon d’Or-winning performances last season
Kane scored 61 times in 51 games for Bayern, 19 more than any other player in Europe’s five biggest leagues and the most by anyone in a season since Cristiano Ronaldo’s 61 for Real Madrid in 2014-15. His Bayern tally included 36 Bundesliga goals and 14 in the Champions League.
For England, his six goals at the World Cup made him his country’s all-time leading World Cup scorer. Bayern’s domestic sweep supplied the team honours that voters weigh alongside individual output.
Edited by Nived Zenith
