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The contest for the prestigious Golden Shoe is heating up as the 2025-26 season passes its midway point.

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

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the hunt this campaign, but faces stiff competition from German Bundesliga marksman Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With many games left to play, other players still have time to enter the contest.

What is the Golden Shoe?

The Golden Boot award was introduced in the 1967-68 season by the French publication L'Equipe to recognize the leading scorer in league matches from a European top division league.

Since the 1997-98 season, the award has been administered by European Sports Media, which introduced a points-based scoring system. Under this format, a player's tallies are weighted with a specific multiplier based on the strength ranking of their domestic competition.

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

For competitions ranked sixth to 22nd in UEFA's list, such as the Portuguese Primeira Liga, goals are worth 1.5 points. Goals in lower-ranked European leagues carry one point.

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

If the deadlock remains, the next tiebreaker is the number of league assists, followed by the fewest goals from the penalty spot. Only if these criteria are used would the prize be shared.

Identifying the Leading Contenders?

Currently, a three-way race is underway for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of most recent winners split by just a single goal.

• Harry Kane (English 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 matches.

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

Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda is tied for fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie fixtures this term.

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

A Look at Past Recipients

Throughout its 59-year existence, the Golden Shoe has been awarded to some of football's most iconic stars.

Portuguese icon Eusébio won the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring 42 goals for Benfica. He then secured the award for a second time in the 1972-73.

Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has won the most Golden Shoes, claiming the award on six separate occasions during his long tenure at Barcelona.

Messi set the record for most goals in a single season with fifty in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the only player to ever 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 Man Utd before going on to win it on three further occasions with Real Madrid.

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

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

Erling Haaland scooped the prize 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 identical goal tally for Bayern Munich the next year.

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

Now, the same three players are battling at the summit of the leaderboard once more this campaign, with Kane presently leading the way.