Who's Leading in the Race for the Golden Boot Award?
The battle for the European Golden Shoe is heating up as the 2025-26 season approaches its halfway mark.
With a different winner in each of the past three campaigns, the honor remains up for grabs. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based striker to secure the award back in the 2022-23 season.
The prolific Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the mix this campaign, but faces stiff rivalry from German Bundesliga marksman Harry Kane and Real Madrid phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With many fixtures left to play, other talents still have an opportunity to enter the fray.
What is the Golden Shoe?
The European Golden Shoe was inaugurated in the 1967-68 by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to celebrate the top goalscorer in domestic league matches from a European top-flight league.
Since the 1997-98, the prize has been administered by European Sports Media, which implemented a points-based points system. Under this format, a player's goals are multiplied by a specific multiplier based on the strength ranking of their league.
Goals scored in the continent's top five leagues—the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1—are valued at two points each.
For competitions ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA list, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth 1.5 points. Goals in lower-ranked European leagues are worth one point.
While the award has been jointly won on multiple instances in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 season dictates that in the case of a points tie, the trophy goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.
If the deadlock remains, the next tiebreaker is the total of league assists, followed by the fewest penalties scored. Only after these criteria are exhausted would the award be shared.
Who are the Leading Challengers?
Currently, a three-horse tussle is underway for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of previous winners split by just a solitary goal.
- Harry Kane (English captain) leads with 19 goals (38 points) from 15 Bundesliga matches.
- Erling Haaland also has 19 goals (38 points) from 17 Premier League outings.
- Kylian Mbappe sits just behind on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga matches.
In fourth is Darko Lemajic of Latvia's side RFS, who has scored 28 goals (28 points) across the club's 36 league games in 2025.
Dutch side Feyenoord forward Ayase Ueda is joint-fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this term.
The rest of the current top ten is made up of players from leagues that function on a calendar year schedule.
Reviewing Previous Recipients
Throughout its nearly six-decade history, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's biggest legends.
Portuguese icon Eusebio claimed the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for SL Benfica. He then won the award for a second time in the 1972-73 season.
Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has won the record number of Golden Shoes, collecting the honor on six separate times during his 17-year spell at FC Barcelona.
Messi set the benchmark for highest tally 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 successive seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first 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 club in England was Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted 32 goals for Liverpool FC.
The award has seen a new winner in each of the past three seasons.
Erling Haaland claimed the prize for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record-equaling 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his maiden Golden Shoe with the identical total for Bayern Munich the following season.
Kylian Mbappe is the current holder of the award after scoring 31 goals (62 points) for Real Madrid in 2024-25.
Now, the same trio are competing at the summit of the leaderboard again this season, with Kane currently leading the way.
