The Bayern Munich and England captain scored 73 goals in 65 games to beat Lamine Yamal and Kylian Mbappé to football’s top individual prize, handed out in his hometown of London for the first time.
Harry Kane is the best men’s footballer in the world. The Bayern Munich striker and England captain won the 2026 Ballon d’Or on Monday, October 26, at the London Palladium, becoming the first Englishman to win the award since Michael Owen in 2001.
Kane beat Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé to the 70th edition of the prize, which France Football magazine first awarded in 1956. He accepted the trophy to loud cheers and chants of his name inside the theater, minutes after Spain’s Alexia Putellas of London City Lionesses won the women’s Ballon d’Or for a third time.
The Harry Kane Ballon d’Or victory puts him alongside Stanley Matthews, Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan and Owen as the only English winners in the award’s history.
The Harry Kane Ballon d’Or season in numbers
The 2026 award covered matches played between August 3, 2025, and July 19, 2026, taking in Kane’s full season with Bayern and England’s run at the World Cup.
Over that period, Kane scored 73 goals in 65 appearances for club and country. He found the net in 47 of those 65 games, with five hat-tricks and 16 braces along the way.
In the Bundesliga, he won the Golden Boot with 36 goals in 31 matches, almost double the 19 scored by his nearest challenger, Stuttgart’s Deniz Undav. He added 14 goals in 13 Champions League games and 10 in six German Cup ties, finishing with 61 goals in 51 club matches.
On the same night, Kane also collected the Gerd Müller Trophy, the award for the season’s top goalscorer.
Three Bayern trophies behind the Harry Kane Ballon d’Or win
For years, Kane carried the label of the great goalscorer who never won anything. That changed with the 2025 Bundesliga title in his second season in Germany, and this season Bayern returned to full dominance with Kane leading the line.
Bayern won 28 of their 34 league games, lost just once and finished 16 points clear of Borussia Dortmund. Kane then scored a hat-trick in a 3-0 win over Stuttgart in the German Cup final to complete a league and cup double, alongside the German Super Cup earlier in the season. That silverware gave the Harry Kane Ballon d’Or case something his earlier seasons lacked.
The only blemish came in the Champions League, where Bayern lost to eventual winners Paris Saint-Germain in the semifinals. Kane scored in both legs, a 5-4 first-leg defeat and a 1-1 draw in the return.
England’s best World Cup since 1966
Kane scored 12 goals in 14 games for England during the voting period, including six in seven matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America.
His goals rescued England from an awkward group-stage moment against DR Congo and carried the team to the semifinals, their best World Cup finish since they won the tournament in 1966. He sat out the third-place playoff, a 6-4 win over France, so the semifinal was the last match of the Harry Kane Ballon d’Or season.
Earlier this month, Kane also equaled Peter Shilton’s men’s record of 125 appearances for England, reaching the mark against Czechia at Wembley.
Leak and delay before the Harry Kane Ballon d’Or reveal
The night did not run entirely to plan. Hours before the ceremony, articles naming Kane, Yamal and Mbappé as winners were published by mistake on the award’s official website, LBC reported. The pieces went up shortly after 5:17 p.m. London time and were taken down by 5:40 p.m., but screenshots had already spread on social media.
Heavy London traffic then kept many guests from arriving on time, and the ceremony started 30 minutes late.
Kane had tried to stay out of the debate in the days before the vote. Speaking after scoring in Bayern’s 2-2 draw with Arsenal last Wednesday, he said, “I try not to think about it.”
Other 2026 Ballon d’Or winners
Spain dominated the rest of the night’s honors, according to the full list of winners published by Yahoo Sports:
- Women’s Ballon d’Or: Alexia Putellas (London City Lionesses, Spain)
- Men’s Kopa Trophy: Lamine Yamal (Barcelona, Spain)
- Women’s Kopa Trophy: Vicky López (Barcelona, Spain)
- Men’s Yashin Trophy: Unai Simón (Athletic Bilbao, Spain)
- Women’s Yashin Trophy: Cata Coll (Barcelona, Spain)
- Men’s Coach of the Year: Luis de la Fuente (Spain)
- Men’s Club of the Year: Paris Saint-Germain
- Men’s Gerd Müller Trophy: Harry Kane (Bayern Munich, England)
The ceremony was held in London rather than Paris to mark the award’s 70th anniversary and to honor England’s Stanley Matthews, the first winner in 1956. Seventy years later, the Ballon d’Or has gone back to an Englishman.
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