Seventy-three goals for club and country: that was Harry Kane's answer to his critics, and it has made the 33-year-old England's first Ballon d'Or winner in 25 years. At the 70th anniversary ceremony at the London Palladium theatre, the Bayern Munich striker saw off the likes of Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal. Kane scored 61 goals in 51 appearances for the German giants in the 2025-26 season and added 12 more for England, with eight assists across both. He drove Bayern to a domestic treble and a successful defence of their Bundesliga title, while also collecting the European Golden Shoe, which goes to the continent's leading league scorer, and the Men's Striker of the Year award. Yet for all those phenomenal numbers, his win has not escaped criticism, because Kane won neither the Champions League nor a major honour with England.
Real Madrid's Mbappé finished second in the 2026 Ballon d'Or rankings, with Barcelona's Yamal third. Rodri came fourth, ahead of Lionel Messi in fifth and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in sixth, while Ousmane Dembélé, Erling Haaland, Michael Olise and Fabián Ruiz completed the top 10 in seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth respectively. Spanish football dominated the other men's categories: Yamal once again took Men's Young Talent of the Year, Spain goalkeeper Unai Simón was named Men's Goalkeeper of the Year and Spain manager Luis de la Fuente collected Men's Coach of the Year, while Paris Saint-Germain were crowned Men's Club of the Year.
In the women's game, Alexia Putellas, who has since swapped Barcelona for Women's Super League side London City Lionesses, won the Ballon d'Or Féminin for a third time, finishing ahead of Barcelona's Ewa Pajor and Manchester City's Khadija Shaw and bringing Aitana Bonmatí's three-year reign to an end. Her crown was well deserved: in her final season at Barcelona she helped the club to a quadruple and was named Player of the Season in the Women's Champions League, with seven goals and seven assists in Europe. Barcelona added four more awards in the women's categories: Vicky López was named Women's Young Talent of the Year for the second year running, Cata Coll took Women's Goalkeeper of the Year, Pere Romeu was named Women's Coach of the Year and the club itself was crowned Women's Club of the Year. The Women's Striker of the Year prize went to Charlyn Corral, the Mexican forward who plays for Pachuca.
One of the evening's standout moments came when Arsenal winger Bukayo Saka received the Sócrates Award, which honours outstanding contributions to social and humanitarian causes. Saka has donated more than 1,000 school uniforms to four schools in Ealing, the west London borough where he grew up, and handed 100 pairs of boots to participants at the Street Soccer Academy, an organisation tackling youth homelessness. Working with the charity Big Shoe, he has also helped provide shelter for families hit by earthquakes in Turkey and Morocco. He has funded life-changing surgery for more than 100 children in Africa, paid for medical check-ups for more than 580 children in Rwanda, and brought drinking water, a library and a pitch to the GSU Mbati school there. "I would like to thank France Football for the opportunity to be here tonight to keep raising awareness of these causes that are close to my heart," Saka said on accepting the award, before sharing the story of a 14-year-old boy from Rwanda with the audience. The gala closed on a historic note: the 70th edition was the first ever staged in London, in tribute to Sir Stanley Matthews, who won the inaugural Ballon d'Or in 1956.
