Harry Kane Wins the Ballon d'Or — First Englishman in 25 Years, on a 73-Goal Season

The joke wrote itself all afternoon. Hours before the ceremony, the Ballon d'Or's official website published — and then hurriedly pulled — finished winner articles naming Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal, one for each of the three finalists. France Football insisted the profiles had been prepared for every nominee and published by mistake, and that they said nothing about the actual result. (Previously told that story earlier today: the website that announced three winners.) On Monday night at the London Palladium, the envelope said the website's first draft had been the true one all along. It is Harry Kane's Ballon d'Or.

Kane, 33, was cheered to the stage by chants of "Harry, Harry" from a home crowd and got emotional at the microphone. "It being here in London as well has made it extra special," he said. "Thank you very much. Thank you to everyone who voted for me. I can imagine it was really tough this year — some incredible players I was up against." The ceremony, the award's 70th edition and the first ever held outside Paris, had been delayed by a rain-soaked, traffic-jammed London evening. It ended with the local favourite holding the golden ball a short ride from where he grew up.

The season that did it

The case was never really about one night. Kane scored 73 goals in 65 matches for club and country in 2025-26 — the total carried by CNN, theScore and Sports Illustrated — 61 of them in 51 appearances for Bayern Munich, where his 36 Bundesliga goals won a third straight league scoring title, alongside 14 in the Champions League and 10 in the DFB-Pokal. Bayern took the Bundesliga, the German Cup and the German Super Cup and reached the Champions League semi-final. For England, he scored 12, six of them at the World Cup, where the Three Lions finished third — the country's best World Cup result since winning it in 1966 (FOX Sports). Only one player this century has had a bigger scoring season: Lionel Messi, with 82 in 2011-12.

The night also handed Kane a second piece of hardware before the main event. Earlier in the evening he collected the Gerd Müller Trophy — the award for the season's top goalscorer, no vote required — as FC Bayern's official site and theScore's full winners list confirmed. It is the second time Kane has won it, after sharing it in 2024; he is only the second player ever to take it twice. The same 73 goals also brought him a second European Golden Shoe.

The men he beat

Mbappé finished second. At the summer's World Cup the Real Madrid forward became the tournament's all-time leading scorer and took its Golden Boot — but a trophyless club season left his case one line short. Yamal, third, won La Liga and the Spanish Super Cup with Barcelona, scored 25 goals with 20 assists, and won the World Cup with Spain; the 19-year-old did not leave London empty-handed, taking the Young Talent of the Year award for the third straight year. Rodri finished fourth and Messi fifth, per USA TODAY's full 1–30 rankings and Flashscore.

On the women's side, Alexia Putellas won the Ballon d'Or Féminin for the third time, after captaining Barcelona to a quadruple and then signing for London City Lionesses in the summer.

A 25-year wait, ended at home

Kane is the fifth Englishman to win the award, after Stanley Matthews (1956), Bobby Charlton (1966), Kevin Keegan (1978 and 1979) and Michael Owen (2001) — which makes this the end of a 25-year drought that ran through the entire careers of David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney without a single win. He is also the first Bayern player to lift it since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981. Two years ago Kane left Tottenham still chasing the first major trophy of his career. He ends this season with a domestic treble, a second European Golden Shoe, a second Gerd Müller Trophy — and the biggest individual prize in the sport, collected in his own city.

The Sports Desk's read: The leak is the funny part, but the drought is the story. For a quarter of a century the Ballon d'Or was something English players attended, not won — an entire golden generation came and went without one. The man who ended it had to leave England to do it: no trophies in a decade at Spurs, then 73 goals in a season in Munich at 33, the best season of his life by his own description, capped at a ceremony moved to London for the first time in the award's history. France Football's website spoiled three winners on Monday afternoon. Only one of the three was real — and it was the one that ends the wait.