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The contest for the prestigious Golden Shoe is reaching a fever pitch as the 2025-26 season approaches its mid-season juncture.

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

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the running this season, but faces formidable competition from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of fixtures left to play, other players still have time to throw their hat into the contest.

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 highest scorer in domestic league matches from a European top-flight league.

Since the 1997-98, the prize has been overseen by European Sports Media, which introduced a weighted scoring system. Under this format, a player's tallies 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, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Ligue 1—are worth two points apiece.

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 are worth one point.

While the award has been jointly won on multiple occasions in the past, a rule change from the 2019-20 season 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 goals from the penalty spot. Only after these tiebreakers are used would the prize be split.

Identifying the Leading Contenders?

Currently, a three-way tussle is underway for the 2025-26 Golden Shoe, with the three most recent winners separated by just a single goal.

• Harry Kane (England captain) leads with 19 goals (38 points) from 15 Bundesliga fixtures.
• 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 place is Darko Lemajic of Latvian 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 fixtures this season.

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

A Look at Past Recipients

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

Portuguese icon Eusébio claimed the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for Benfica. He then won the award for a second time in the 1972-73 season.

Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has secured the record number of Golden Shoes, claiming the award on six separate times during his 17-year spell at FC Barcelona.

Messi established the benchmark for most goals 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 to 2019.

Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo first won award in the 2007-08 with Manchester United before proceeding to win it three more times with Real Madrid.

The first player to win the award while at an English club was Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted thirty-two goals for Liverpool.

The prize has seen a different winner in every one of the past three seasons.

Erling Haaland claimed the prize for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his maiden Golden Shoe with the same total for Bayern Munich the following year.

Kylian Mbappe is the current winner 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 again this season, with Kane currently leading the pack.