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

With a new winner in each of the previous three campaigns, the award remains highly contested. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based striker to claim the trophy back in 2022-23.

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the running this campaign, but encounters formidable rivalry from Bayern Munich marksman Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With many matches remaining, other talents still have time to throw their hat into the fray.

What is the Golden Shoe?

The European Golden Shoe was first launched in the 1967-68 season by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to celebrate the top 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 weighted points system. Under this method, a player's tallies are multiplied by a designated multiplier based on the UEFA coefficient of their league.

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

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

While the award 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 award goes to the player with the least minutes played.

If the tie persists, the next deciding factor 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.

Identifying the Primary Contenders?

At present, a three-way race is underway for the 2025-26 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 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 the club's 36 league games in 2025.

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

The remainder of the current top ten is made up of players from leagues that function on a January-to-December schedule.

A Look at Past Winners

Throughout its 59-year history, the Golden Shoe has been won by some of football's biggest legends.

Portuguese legend Eusébio claimed the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring 42 goals for Benfica. He later secured the award for a second time in the 1972-73 season.

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has won the record number of Golden Shoes, claiming the award on six separate 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 straight seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19.

Portuguese superstar 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 first player to win the award while at an club in England was Liverpool's Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted 32 goals for Liverpool FC.

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

Erling Haaland won the prize for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record-equaling 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane earned his first Golden Shoe with the same total for Bayern Munich the following 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 trio are vying at the summit of the leaderboard again this campaign, with Kane currently out in front the way.