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The competition for the prestigious Golden Shoe is reaching a fever pitch as the 2025-26 season approaches its mid-season juncture.

With a new winner in every one of the previous three campaigns, the prize remains highly contested. Manchester City star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based player to claim the award back in 2022-23.

The prodigious Norwegian striker is back in the hunt this campaign, but faces formidable competition from German Bundesliga marksman Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of fixtures remaining, other players still have an opportunity to enter the fray.

Understanding the Golden Shoe?

The Golden Boot award was inaugurated in the 1967-68 by the French publication L'Equipe to honor the highest scorer in league matches from a European top-flight league.

Since the 1997-98 season, the award has been overseen by European Sports Media, which implemented a weighted scoring system. Under this method, a player's goals are weighted with a specific coefficient based on the strength ranking of their domestic competition.

Goals scored in the continent's top five leagues—the Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Ligue 1—are worth two points apiece.

For competitions ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA rankings, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth one and a half points. Goals in lower-ranked European leagues are worth one point.

While the honor has been shared on several occasions in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 season states that in the case of a points tie, the award goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.

If the tie persists, the subsequent deciding factor is the number of assists, followed by the fewest penalties scored. Only after these tiebreakers are used would the prize be shared.

Who are the Primary Challengers?

As it stands, a three-way race is underway for the 2025-26 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 fixtures.
• Erling Haaland also has 19 goals (38 points) from 17 Premier League appearances.
• Kylian Mbappe sits one back on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga matches.

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

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

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

A Look at Previous Winners

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

Portuguese legend Eusebio won the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for Benfica. He then won the award for a second time in the 1972-73 season.

Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has secured the record number of Golden Shoes, claiming the award on six occasions during his 17-year tenure at Barcelona.

Messi established the benchmark for highest tally in a single season 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 superstar 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 Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted thirty-two goals for Liverpool FC.

The award has seen a different winner in each of the past 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 secured his first Golden Shoe with the same goal tally for Bayern Munich the next 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 competing at the summit of the leaderboard once more this season, with Kane currently leading the pack.