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

With a different winner in every one of the previous three campaigns, the honor remains up for grabs. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based forward to win the award back in the 2022-23 season.

The prolific Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the hunt this season, but encounters stiff competition from German Bundesliga marksman Harry Kane and Real Madrid superstar Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of games left to play, other talents still have time to enter the fray.

What is the European Golden Shoe Award?

The European Golden Shoe was inaugurated in the 1967-68 season by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to celebrate the leading goalscorer in league matches from a European top-flight league.

Since the 1997-98, the prize has been overseen by European Sports Media, which implemented a weighted points system. Under this format, a player's goals are multiplied by a designated multiplier based on the UEFA coefficient of their league.

Goals scored in the continent's top five leagues—the English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1—are worth two points apiece.

For competitions 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 are worth one point.

While the honor has been jointly won on multiple occasions in the past, a rule change from the 2019-20 states that in the event of a points tie, the award goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.

If the deadlock persists, the next tiebreaker is the total of league assists, followed by the least penalties scored. Only after these tiebreakers are exhausted would the prize be shared.

Who are the Leading Contenders?

As it stands, a three-horse tussle exists for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of most recent winners split by just a solitary goal.

• Harry Kane (English captain) leads with 19 goals (38 points) from 15 Bundesliga games.
• 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 games.

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

Feyenoord forward Ayase Ueda is tied for fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this season.

The remainder of the current top ten is made up of players from leagues that function on a January-to-December schedule.

Reviewing Previous Recipients

Throughout its nearly six-decade existence, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's most iconic names.

Portuguese icon Eusébio won the inaugural trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for Benfica. He later secured the award for a second time in the 1972-73 season.

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has won the most Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six separate occasions during his long spell at FC Barcelona.

Messi established the record for highest tally in a single season with 50 in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the only player to date to win it in three consecutive seasons from 2016 to 2019.

Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo first won award in the 2007-08 season with Manchester United 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 Liverpool's Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted thirty-two goals for Liverpool FC.

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

Erling Haaland won the prize for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record-equaling thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his first Golden Shoe with the identical goal tally for Bayern Munich the next 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 vying at the top of the leaderboard once more this campaign, with Kane presently out in front the pack.