Harry Kane is the 2026 Ballon d'Or winner. He collected it at the London Palladium on 26 October, the first Englishman to win since Michael Owen in 2001 and the first Bayern Munich player since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge in 1981. He finished ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal, and picked up the Gerd Müller Trophy as the year's top scorer on the same night.
The season in numbers
| 2025–26 | Kane |
|---|---|
| Bundesliga goals | 36 in 31 games (equalled his own league record) |
| Goals for Bayern, all competitions | 61, a club record this century |
| Goals for club and country | 73 (Gerd Müller Trophy) |
| World Cup 2026 | 6 goals, England third |
| Trophies | Bundesliga, DFB-Pokal, DFL-Supercup |
| Champions League | Joint top scorer |
How the season built
It started fast. Kane scored in the Supercup against Stuttgart in August 2025 and got a hat-trick against RB Leipzig on the opening Bundesliga weekend. In the Champions League he scored twice against Chelsea and became only the third player, after Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar, to score 20 Champions League goals for two different clubs.
The goals kept coming through the spring. A hat-trick against Köln in May took him to 36 league goals, level with his own Bundesliga record and enough for a third straight top-scorer award. A week later he scored another hat-trick in the DFB-Pokal final, a 3–0 win over Stuttgart, to finish the double.
At the World Cup in North America he scored six times, including two against Croatia in the opening game. England went out in the semi-finals and then beat France 6–4 in the third-place play-off, their best finish since 1966.
The long road to here
Kane's story is about patience. Tottenham loaned him to Leyton Orient, Millwall, Norwich and Leicester before he got a proper chance, and he then spent more than a decade scoring 280 goals for Spurs, the club record, without winning a trophy.
Bayern paid €110 million for him in 2023, the most expensive signing in Bundesliga history. His first major trophy, the 2024–25 Bundesliga, came at 31. A year and a half later he has a double, a Ballon d'Or, and in September 2026 he became the fastest player ever to 100 Bundesliga goals, in 98 games.
For England he is the record scorer with 91 goals and, since October 2026, level with Peter Shilton as the most-capped men's player on 125.
England's Ballon d'Or winners
Kane is the fifth English winner. Matthews won the very first Ballon d'Or in 1956, and the 2026 ceremony was held in London partly to mark seventy years since.
| Year | Player | Club |
|---|---|---|
| 1956 | Stanley Matthews | Blackpool |
| 1966 | Bobby Charlton | Manchester United |
| 1978 | Kevin Keegan | Hamburg |
| 1979 | Kevin Keegan | Hamburg |
| 2001 | Michael Owen | Liverpool |
| 2026 | Harry Kane | Bayern Munich |
Who he beat
Mbappé finished second after topping the La Liga scoring charts, sharing the Champions League top-scorer award and winning a second World Cup Golden Boot. Yamal, third, was La Liga's Player of the Season and won the World Cup with Spain at 18. Rodri, who took the Golden Ball at that World Cup, was fourth, and Messi fifth.
Kane's Bayern teammate Michael Olise finished ninth after a record seven assists at the World Cup. The full 30 are in our results piece.
Go deeper on Kane
Think you know Kane? Play free
Test yourself on the Ballon d'Or winner and the rest of the top 30, or put your football knowledge to work in a free game.