Harry Kane has won the 2026 Ballon d’Or, ending a 25-year wait for an English winner of football‘s most prestigious individual prize. The Bayern Munich and England captain beat Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappe to the men’s award at Monday night’s ceremony at the London Palladium, becoming the first Englishman to lift the trophy since Michael Owen in 2001.
The women’s award went to Alexia Putellas, who claimed the Ballon d’Or Feminin for a third time after leading Barcelona to a historic quadruple. It was a night full of winners in London, but the two headline prizes both rewarded seasons of remarkable consistency rather than a single trophy or final.
Kane ends England’s 25-year wait
Harry Kane Ballon d’Or 2026 is a headline England fans have waited a quarter of a century to read. No Englishman had won the award since Owen’s triumph in 2001, and Kane’s name had appeared in the conversation for years without ever reaching the top of the voting. On Monday night, that changed.
Kane beat out Yamal and Mbappe in one of the closest Ballon d’Or races in recent years. Yamal, still only 19, arrived as the game’s brightest young star, while Mbappe carried Real Madrid’s hopes after another prolific season. In the end, the voters went for the player whose numbers across the whole season were simply too large to ignore.
The England captain also led the Three Lions to a third-place finish at the World Cup in North America in the summer. He did not win the Champions League or the World Cup, but the Ballon d’Or has always rewarded the outstanding individual season, and Kane’s case rested on volume, consistency and leadership across club and country.
A season of 73 goals
The numbers behind Kane’s win are staggering. He scored 73 goals in 65 matches across all competitions for club and country in 2025-26, with 61 of those coming for German champions Bayern Munich. The Bayern figure alone, 61 goals in 51 matches, would count as a career season for almost any other striker.
That scoring run also earned Kane the evening’s striker award, the Gerd Muller Trophy, which goes to the top scorer without a vote. It was the one award of the night decided purely by goals, and Kane won it outright. Charlyn Corral took the women’s striker award after scoring 22 regular-season goals for Pachuca in the Apertura 2025, breaking her own Liga MX Femenil record, plus 13 goals for Mexico.
Kane’s game has always been about more than finishing. His link-up play, his passing from deep and his penalty record all form part of the package. But this was the season in which the goals piled up so fast that the argument for anyone else became very hard to sustain.
Putellas makes it three
Alexia Putellas won the Ballon d’Or Feminin for the third time in her career, having previously taken the award in 2021 and 2022. She now joins her compatriot and former Barcelona team-mate Aitana Bonmati as the only players ever to win the women’s prize three times.
Putellas signed for London City Lionesses in July, but her award was won on the back of her final season at Barcelona. She stepped up after Bonmati suffered a broken leg and led the Catalan side to a historic quadruple, including a fourth Champions League title. Her personal return for the season was 26 goals and 15 assists in 53 matches.
Her win continues a remarkable Spanish run. Spanish players have now won the Ballon d’Or Feminin in six consecutive years. The last non-Spanish winner was United States star Megan Rapinoe in 2019, which shows just how dominant Spain’s generation of players has become in the women’s game.
Yamal and the young stars
Lamine Yamal did not leave London empty-handed. The 19-year-old won the Kopa Trophy as the world’s best player under 21 for a third consecutive season, a run that underlines how long he has already been performing at the very highest level. He was also part of Spain’s World Cup-winning squad, and many believe a senior Ballon d’Or is a matter of time rather than doubt.
Yamal beat several young stars for the award, including his Barcelona and Spain team-mate Pau Cubarsi, a cornerstone of the Spanish defence that conceded only one goal in eight World Cup matches in the summer. On the women’s side, Vicky Lopez won the Kopa Trophy for a second straight year. The 20-year-old attacker stood out while helping Barcelona achieve their historic quadruple in 2025-26.
For Yamal, the Kopa Trophy is both a consolation and a warning to the rest of football. He is already winning senior honours and major trophies while still a teenager, and the senior Ballon d’Or race in the coming years is likely to run through him.
The night’s other winners
Paris Saint-Germain were named men’s Club of the Year after defending their Champions League title, with last year’s Ballon d’Or winner Ousmane Dembele accepting the trophy on the club’s behalf. Barcelona took the women’s Club of the Year award after their quadruple season, their third win in four years on the women’s side.
The goalkeeping awards also went to Spain’s golden generation. Unai Simon won the men’s Yashin Trophy after starting for Spain at the World Cup, where his distribution with the ball at his feet was as important as his shot-stopping. Barcelona goalkeeper Cata Coll won the women’s award, dethroning 2024-25 winner Hannah Hampton after a central role in Barca’s trophy-laden campaign.
Spain completed a clean sweep of the coaching awards. Luis de la Fuente was named men’s Coach of the Year after building a Spain team that won the 2026 World Cup in dominant fashion, going unbeaten in North America with seven wins in eight games and only one goal conceded. Pere Romeu took the women’s award after guiding Barcelona to four trophies, including the Champions League. Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka received the Socrates Award for his charity and humanitarian work providing medical care and aid for children and families in London and around the world.
The leak that almost spoiled the night
The ceremony came with an unusual subplot. Hours before the winners were announced, articles declaring a winner appeared on the Ballon d’Or’s own website for Kane, Mbappe and Yamal, then were swiftly removed. Screenshots spread across social media, and for a while it looked as though the result had leaked.
Closer inspection told a different story. The articles had been prepared in advance for several possible outcomes, which is standard practice for a live awards show, and their brief appearance online was an error rather than a genuine leak. France Football, which runs the award with UEFA, launched an investigation into how the pages were published.
What matters is what happened on stage. The official announcement at the London Palladium confirmed Kane as the men’s winner and Putellas as the women’s winner, and that announcement, not a briefly visible web page, is the result that goes into the record books. After a day of confusion, football’s biggest individual prize has a clear and deserving winner, and for England, a 25-year wait is finally over.
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