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The battle for the Golden Boot trophy is intensifying as the 2025-26 season approaches its mid-season juncture.

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

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the running this season, but encounters stiff competition from Bayern Munich forward Harry Kane and Real Madrid phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With many matches left to play, other talents still have time to enter the contest.

What is the European Golden Shoe Award?

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

Since the 1997-98, the award has been administered by European Sports Media, which introduced a points-based scoring 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 the continent's five major leagues—the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Ligue 1—are worth two points apiece.

For competitions ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA's list, 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 award has been jointly won on several occasions in the past, a rule change from the 2019-20 states that in the event of a points tie, the trophy goes to the player with the least minutes played.

If the tie remains, the subsequent deciding factor is the number of league assists, followed by the fewest penalties scored. Only if these criteria are exhausted would the prize be split.

Identifying the Main Challengers?

At present, a three-way tussle exists for the 2025-26 Golden Shoe, with the trio of most recent winners separated by just a solitary 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 outings.
• Kylian Mbappe sits one back on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga games.

In fourth 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 term.

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

Reviewing Past Winners

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

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

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has secured the most Golden Shoes, collecting the honor on six separate occasions during his 17-year spell at Barcelona.

Messi set the benchmark for highest tally in a single season with fifty in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the first and 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 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 FC.

The prize has seen a new 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-equaling 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his first Golden Shoe with the identical total for Bayern Munich the next season.

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

Now, the very trio are vying at the top of the leaderboard again this season, with Kane presently leading the way.