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The contest for the Golden Boot trophy is intensifying as the 2025-26 season nears its mid-season juncture.

With a different winner in every one of the last three campaigns, the honor remains up for grabs. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the last Premier League-based striker to secure the trophy back in the 2022-23 season.

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the hunt this campaign, but encounters tough rivalry from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Real Madrid superstar Kylian Mbappe. With many matches left to play, other players still have an opportunity to enter the fray.

Understanding the European Golden Shoe Award?

The Golden Boot award was introduced in the 1967-68 season by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to honor the top goalscorer in league matches from a European top division league.

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

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

For leagues ranked sixth to 22nd in UEFA's rankings, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth 1.5 points. Goals in all other European leagues carry one point.

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

If the deadlock persists, the subsequent deciding factor is the total of assists, followed by the fewest penalties scored. Only if these tiebreakers are exhausted would the prize be shared.

Identifying the Main Contenders?

As it stands, a three-horse battle exists for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of previous winners separated 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 one back on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga games.

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

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

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

Reviewing Past Winners

Throughout its 59-year history, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's biggest stars.

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

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has secured the most Golden Shoes, collecting the honor on six separate times during his long tenure at Barcelona.

Messi set the record for most goals in a single season with 50 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 claimed his first award in the 2007-08 with Man Utd before proceeding to win it three more times with Real Madrid.

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

The prize has seen a new winner in every one 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 goal tally for Bayern Munich the following season.

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

Now, the same three players are vying at the summit of the leaderboard again this campaign, with Kane presently out in front the way.