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The competition for the prestigious Golden Shoe is intensifying as the 2025-26 season nears its halfway mark.

With a new winner in every one of the previous three campaigns, the honor remains highly contested. Manchester City star Erling Haaland was the last Premier League-based forward to secure the trophy back in 2022-23.

The prodigious Norwegian striker is once again in the mix this term, but faces tough competition from Bayern Munich forward Harry Kane and Real Madrid phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of games remaining, other players still have an opportunity to throw their hat into the fray.

What is the Golden Shoe?

The Golden Boot award was inaugurated in the 1967-68 by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to recognize the highest scorer in domestic league matches from a European top-flight league.

Since the 1997-98 season, the prize has been overseen by European Sports Media, which introduced a points-based points system. Under this method, a player's tallies are weighted with a designated coefficient based on the strength ranking of their domestic competition.

Goals scored in Europe's five major leagues—the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, German Bundesliga, Serie A, and Ligue 1—are valued at two points each.

For competitions ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA's rankings, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth 1.5 points. Goals in all other European leagues carry one point.

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

If the tie remains, the next tiebreaker is the number of league assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only if these tiebreakers are exhausted would the award be shared.

Who are the Main Challengers?

As it stands, a three-horse battle is underway for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the three most recent winners split by just a single goal.

• Harry Kane (English captain) leads with 19 goals (38 points) from 15 Bundesliga games.
• 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 is RFS striker Darko Lemajic of Latvian club RFS, who has netted 28 goals (28 points) across the club's 36 league games in 2025.

Feyenoord forward Ayase Ueda is joint-fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this season.

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

Reviewing Previous Winners

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

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

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

Messi established the benchmark for most goals in a campaign with fifty in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the only player to date to win it in three consecutive seasons from 2016 to 2019.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo first won award in the 2007-08 season with Manchester United before going on 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 FC.

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

Erling Haaland claimed the prize 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 season.

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

Now, the same three players are vying at the summit of the standings again this season, with Kane presently leading the way.