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The battle for the European Golden Shoe is heating up as the 2025-26 season passes its mid-season juncture.

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

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the running this term, but faces tough competition from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of matches remaining, other players 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 by the French newspaper L'Equipe to recognize the top goalscorer in league matches from a European top division league.

Since the 1997-98, the award has been overseen by European Sports Media, which introduced a points-based 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 Europe's five major leagues—the English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and French 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 lower-ranked European leagues carry one point.

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

If the tie remains, the subsequent tiebreaker is the number of assists, followed by the fewest penalties scored. Only after these criteria are exhausted would the award be split.

Who are the Leading Challengers?

As it stands, a three-horse battle is underway for the 2025-26 Golden Shoe, with the trio of 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 one back on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga games.

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

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

The rest of the top 10 is comprised of players from leagues that operate on a January-to-December schedule.

Reviewing Previous Recipients

Throughout its nearly six-decade history, the Golden Shoe has been awarded to some of football's biggest stars.

Portuguese icon Eusébio won the inaugural trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for Benfica. He later 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 times during his long spell at Barcelona.

Messi established the record for highest tally 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 straight seasons from 2016 to 2019.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first award in the 2007-08 season with Manchester United before going on to win it three more times with Real Madrid.

The inaugural player to win the award while at an English club was Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted 32 goals for Liverpool FC.

The prize has seen a new winner in every one of the last three seasons.

Erling Haaland scooped the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane earned his maiden Golden Shoe with the same goal tally for Bayern Munich the following year.

Kylian Mbappe is the reigning winner of the award after scoring 31 goals (62 points) for Real Madrid in 2024-25.

Now, the same three players are battling at the summit of the leaderboard again this season, with Kane currently leading the way.