🔗 Share this article

The battle for the Golden Boot trophy is heating up as the 2025-26 season nears its halfway mark.

With a different winner in every one of the past three campaigns, the prize remains highly contested. Manchester City star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based striker to win the award back in the 2022-23 season.

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the running this campaign, but faces stiff competition from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With many games left to play, other talents still have an opportunity to throw their hat into the contest.

Understanding the European Golden Shoe Award?

The European Golden Shoe was introduced in the 1967-68 season by the French newspaper L'Equipe to recognize the top scorer in domestic league matches from a European top division league.

Since the 1997-98, the award has been administered by European Sports Media, which introduced a points-based scoring system. Under this format, a player's tallies are multiplied by a specific multiplier based on the strength ranking of their domestic competition.

Goals scored in the continent's top five leagues—the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and French Ligue 1—are valued at two points each.

For leagues ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA's list, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth one and a half points. Goals in all other European leagues carry one point.

While the honor has been jointly won on multiple instances in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 season dictates that in the event of a tie, the trophy goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.

If the tie persists, the next deciding factor is the total of assists, followed by the least penalties scored. Only if these criteria are used would the award be split.

Who are the Main Contenders?

At present, a three-horse battle is underway for the 2025-26 Golden Shoe, with the three previous winners separated by just a solitary goal.

• Harry Kane (English captain) leads with 19 goals (38 points) from 15 Bundesliga fixtures.
• Erling Haaland also has 19 goals (38 points) from 17 Premier League outings.
• Kylian Mbappe sits one back on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga games.

In fourth place is Darko Lemajic of Latvia's side RFS, who has scored 28 goals (28 points) across their 36 league games in 2025.

Dutch side Feyenoord forward Ayase Ueda is joint-fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this season.

The rest of the top 10 is made up of players from leagues that operate on a calendar year schedule.

A Look at Previous Recipients

Throughout its 59-year existence, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's most iconic legends.

Portuguese legend Eusebio claimed the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for SL Benfica. He then secured the award for a second time in the 1972-73.

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has won the record number of Golden Shoes, claiming the honor on six occasions during his 17-year spell at Barcelona.

Messi set the record for most goals in a single season with fifty in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the first and only player to date to win it in three straight seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo first won award in the 2007-08 with Man Utd before proceeding to win it on three further occasions with Real Madrid.

The first player to win the award while at an English club was Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted 32 goals for Liverpool.

The prize has seen a new winner in each of the past three seasons.

Erling Haaland scooped the prize for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his first Golden Shoe with the same total for Bayern Munich the following season.

Kylian Mbappe is the reigning winner of the award after scoring 31 goals (62 points) for Real Madrid in 2024-25.

Now, the very three players are competing at the top of the leaderboard again this season, with Kane currently out in front the way.