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The contest for the prestigious Golden Shoe is intensifying as the 2025-26 season nears its midway point.

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

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the hunt this season, but encounters formidable competition from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Real Madrid superstar Kylian Mbappe. With many fixtures left to play, other talents still have time to throw their hat into the contest.

Understanding the European Golden Shoe Award?

The Golden Boot award was inaugurated in the 1967-68 by the French newspaper L'Equipe to recognize the leading goalscorer in domestic league matches from a European top-flight league.

Since the 1997-98 season, the award has been administered by European Sports Media, which implemented a weighted scoring system. Under this format, a player's tallies are weighted with a specific coefficient based on the UEFA coefficient of their league.

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's rankings, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth one and a half points. Goals in all other European leagues are worth one point.

While the honor has been jointly won on several occasions in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 dictates that in the case of a tie, the trophy goes to the player with the least minutes played.

If the tie remains, the next deciding factor is the number of assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only after these criteria are used would the prize be shared.

Who are the Primary Contenders?

Currently, a three-horse race is underway for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the three previous winners separated 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 matches.

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

Dutch side Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda is tied for fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this season.

The rest of the current top ten is made up of players from leagues that operate on a calendar year schedule.

A Look at Past Recipients

Throughout its nearly six-decade existence, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's biggest legends.

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

Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has won the most Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six separate times during his 17-year tenure at Barcelona.

Messi established the record for most goals in a single season with 50 in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the only player to date to win it in three successive seasons from 2016 to 2019.

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

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

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

Erling Haaland claimed 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 season.

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

Now, the very trio are battling at the top of the leaderboard once more this campaign, with Kane currently leading the pack.