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The contest for the European Golden Shoe is heating up as the 2025-26 season nears its halfway mark.

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

The prodigious Norwegian striker is back in the running this season, but faces formidable rivalry from Bayern Munich marksman Harry Kane and Real Madrid superstar Kylian Mbappe. With many games remaining, other players still have an opportunity to enter 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 celebrate the top goalscorer in league matches from a European top division league.

Since the 1997-98 season, the prize has been administered by European Sports Media, which implemented a points-based scoring system. Under this format, a player's goals are multiplied by a designated multiplier based on the UEFA coefficient of their domestic competition.

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

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

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

If the tie persists, the next deciding factor is the total of league assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only after these tiebreakers are exhausted would the prize be split.

Identifying the Leading Contenders?

At present, a three-way battle exists 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 RFS striker Darko Lemajic of Latvia's side RFS, who has scored 28 goals (28 points) across the club's 36 league games in 2025.

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

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

Reviewing Past Winners

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

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

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has won the record number of Golden Shoes, collecting the honor on six times during his long spell at FC Barcelona.

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

Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo first won award in the 2007-08 season 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 scored thirty-two goals for Liverpool.

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 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane earned his maiden Golden Shoe with the same total for Bayern Munich the next year.

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 vying at the summit of the leaderboard once more this campaign, with Kane currently out in front the pack.