Harry Kane has been crowned the winner of the 2026 Ballon d’Or, becoming the first Englishman to claim football’s most prestigious individual award since Michael Owen in 2001.
The 33-year-old Bayern Munich and England striker received the Golden Ball at the ceremony held on 26 October 2026 at the London Palladium, the first time the event took place outside France. The move to London marked the 70th edition of the awards and paid tribute to Sir Stanley Matthews, the inaugural winner in 1956.
Kane finished ahead of Kylian Mbappé of Real Madrid and Lamine Yamal of Barcelona in what was widely regarded as one of the closest races in recent years.
His victory was built on an extraordinary 2025-26 season in which he scored 73 goals across all competitions for club and country—the second-highest single-season total in the modern era, behind only Lionel Messi’s 82 goals in 2011-12.
The breakdown of Kane’s haul underlines the scale of his achievement. He scored 36 goals in the Bundesliga, leading Bayern Munich to the league title. In the Champions League he netted 14 times as Bayern reached the semi-finals before falling to eventual winners Paris Saint-Germain.
He added 10 goals in the DFB-Pokal as Bayern completed a domestic double, one more in the DFL-Supercup, and 12 goals for England. At the 2026 World Cup he scored six times while captaining England to a third-place finish, their best performance since winning the tournament in 1966.
Kane also collected the Gerd Müller Trophy as the world’s outstanding striker and the European Golden Shoe. It was his second Gerd Müller award after sharing the honour with Mbappé in 2024. Bayern’s domestic success and England’s strong World Cup campaign provided the collective achievements that voters traditionally reward alongside individual brilliance.
The win makes Kane only the fifth English recipient of the Ballon d’Or after Matthews, Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Owen. He becomes the first Bayern Munich player to win the award since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1980 and 1981, and the first Bundesliga-based winner since Matthias Sammer in 1996.
At the ceremony Kane also took the men’s striker of the year award. In his acceptance remarks he described the season as the best of his career and stressed that the goals were the product of a collective team effort. Other major winners on the night included Alexia Putellas, who claimed a third Women’s Ballon d’Or, Lamine Yamal as young talent of the year, and Paris Saint-Germain as men’s club of the year.
Kane’s triumph caps a remarkable campaign of relentless goalscoring, leadership and silverware. After years of near-misses and consistent high-level performance, the England captain has finally been recognised as the best player in the world.