Who is Leading in the Pursuit for the Golden Shoe?
The competition for the European Golden Shoe is heating up as the current season approaches its midway point.
With a different winner in every one of the past three campaigns, the award remains highly contested. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the last Premier League-based player to win the award back in the 2022-23 season.
The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the hunt this campaign, but encounters stiff competition from Bayern Munich marksman Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With many matches left to play, other talents still have time to enter the contest.
Understanding the Golden Shoe?
The European Golden Shoe was inaugurated in the 1967-68 by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to honor the leading goalscorer in league matches from a European top-flight league.
Since the 1997-98 season, the award has been administered by European Sports Media, which introduced a points-based scoring system. Under this method, a player's tallies are multiplied by a designated coefficient based on the strength ranking of their domestic competition.
Goals scored in the continent's five major leagues—the Premier League, La Liga, 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 1.5 points. Goals in lower-ranked European leagues are worth one point.
While the award has been jointly won on several instances in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 season states that in the case of a tie, the award goes to the player with the least minutes played.
If the tie remains, the next deciding factor is the total of league assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only after these tiebreakers are exhausted would the award be shared.
Who are the Main Challengers?
As it stands, a three-way race is underway for the 2025-26 Golden Shoe, with the three previous 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 appearances.
- Kylian Mbappe sits just behind on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga games.
In fourth is Darko Lemajic of Latvian club RFS, who has scored 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 fixtures this season.
The rest of the top 10 is made up of players from leagues that function on a January-to-December schedule.
Reviewing Previous Recipients
Throughout its 59-year existence, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's biggest names.
Portuguese icon Eusebio won the inaugural trophy in 1968, scoring 42 goals for Benfica. He later won the award for a second time in the 1972-73 season.
Argentine legend Lionel Messi has secured the most Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six separate occasions during his 17-year tenure at Barcelona.
Messi set the benchmark for highest tally in a campaign with fifty in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the only player to ever to win it in three consecutive seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19.
Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo first won award in the 2007-08 with Manchester United before proceeding to win it on three further occasions with Real Madrid.
The first player to win the award while at an club in England was Liverpool's Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he scored thirty-two goals for Liverpool.
The award has seen a new winner in each of the last three seasons.
Erling Haaland won the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane earned his maiden Golden Shoe with the same total for Bayern Munich the following season.
Kylian Mbappe is the current winner 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 standings once more this season, with Kane presently out in front the pack.
