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The contest for the prestigious Golden Shoe is reaching a fever pitch as the 2025-26 season passes its halfway mark.

With a new winner in each of the last three campaigns, the award remains highly contested. Manchester City star Erling Haaland was the last Premier League-based player to claim the trophy back in 2022-23.

The prodigious Norwegian striker is back in the mix this season, but encounters formidable competition from German Bundesliga marksman Harry Kane and Real Madrid phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of fixtures left to play, other talents still have time to enter the fray.

What is the European Golden Shoe Award?

The Golden Boot award was first launched in the 1967-68 season by the France-based publication L'Equipe to celebrate the top goalscorer in domestic league matches from a European top division league.

Since the 1997-98, the prize has been overseen by European Sports Media, which implemented a weighted scoring system. Under this method, a player's tallies are multiplied by a specific multiplier based on the UEFA coefficient of their domestic competition.

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

For leagues ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA rankings, such as the Portuguese Primeira Liga, goals are worth one and a half points. Goals in lower-ranked European leagues carry one point.

While the award has been jointly won on multiple instances in the past, a rule change from the 2019-20 season dictates that in the case of a points tie, the award goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.

If the tie persists, the next deciding factor is the number of assists, followed by the fewest goals from the penalty spot. Only if these criteria are exhausted would the prize be split.

Identifying the Leading Challengers?

At present, a three-way tussle is underway for the 2025-26 Golden Shoe, with the three most recent winners split by just a solitary goal.

• Harry Kane (England 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 one back on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga matches.

In fourth is RFS striker 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 tied for fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this term.

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

Reviewing Past Winners

Throughout its nearly six-decade history, the Golden Shoe has been won by some of football's most iconic stars.

Portuguese icon Eusébio won the inaugural 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 legend Lionel Messi has secured the record number of Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six times during his long spell at FC Barcelona.

Messi established the benchmark for most goals in a campaign with 50 in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the only player to date to win it in three successive seasons from 2016 to 2019.

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

The inaugural player to win the award while at an club in England was Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he scored thirty-two goals for Liverpool FC.

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

Erling Haaland won the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record-equaling thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane earned his first Golden Shoe with the identical total for Bayern Munich the next season.

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

Now, the same trio are competing at the summit of the leaderboard once more this campaign, with Kane currently leading the way.