🔗 Share this article Who's Out in Front in the Pursuit for the Golden Boot Award? The contest for the Golden Boot trophy is intensifying as the 2025-26 season nears its halfway mark. With a different winner in every one of the past three campaigns, the prize remains wide open. Manchester City star Erling Haaland was the last Premier League-based forward to claim the trophy back in the 2022-23 season. The prolific Norwegian striker is once again in the hunt this campaign, but faces formidable competition from Bayern Munich forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With many fixtures left to play, other players still have an opportunity to enter the contest. Harry Kane, Erling Haaland, and Kylian Mbappe have all secured one European Golden Shoe to date. What is the European Golden Shoe Award? The Golden Boot award was introduced in the 1967-68 season by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to recognize the top goalscorer in league matches from a European top division league. Since the 1997-98, the prize has been administered by European Sports Media, which introduced a weighted points system. Under this format, a player's goals are weighted with a specific coefficient based on the strength ranking of their league. Goals scored in the continent's five major leagues—the Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and French Ligue 1—are worth two points apiece. For leagues ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA's rankings, such as the Portuguese Primeira Liga, goals are worth one and a half points. Goals in all other European leagues carry one point. While the award has been jointly won on multiple occasions in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 season states that in the event of a tie, the award goes to the player with the fewest minutes played. If the deadlock remains, the subsequent deciding factor is the total of league assists, followed by the fewest penalties scored. Only after these tiebreakers are used would the prize be shared. Who are the Leading Contenders? Currently, a three-horse race is underway for the current season's 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 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 games. In fourth place is Darko Lemajic of Latvian side RFS, who has netted 28 goals (28 points) across their 36 league games in 2025. Dutch side Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda is joint-fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this season. The remainder of the current top ten is comprised of players from leagues that function on a calendar year schedule. Reviewing Previous Winners Lionel Messi holds the distinction for the highest number of Golden Shoe awards in history with six. Throughout its nearly six-decade existence, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's biggest stars. Portuguese icon Eusebio won the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring 42 goals for Benfica. He then won the award for a second time in the 1972-73. Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has won the record number of Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six occasions during his long tenure at Barcelona. Messi set the benchmark for highest tally 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 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 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 different winner in every one of the last three seasons. Erling Haaland won the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his first Golden Shoe with the same goal tally for Bayern Munich the next year. Kylian Mbappe is the reigning 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.