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The battle for the Golden Boot trophy is heating up as the 2025-26 season approaches its halfway mark.

With a different winner in each of the previous three campaigns, the honor remains highly contested. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based forward to win the trophy back in the 2022-23 season.

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the running this campaign, but encounters formidable competition from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With many fixtures left to play, other players still have time to enter the contest.

What is the Golden Shoe?

The Golden Boot award was introduced in the 1967-68 by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to celebrate the leading goalscorer in league matches from a European top-flight league.

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

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

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

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

If the tie persists, the next tiebreaker is the number of assists, followed by the fewest goals from the penalty spot. Only after these tiebreakers are exhausted would the award be split.

Identifying the Main Challengers?

As it stands, a three-way race is underway for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of previous winners separated by just a single goal.

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

Dutch side Feyenoord forward Ayase Ueda is tied for 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 Recipients

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

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

Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has secured the record number of Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six separate times during his 17-year spell at FC 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 successive seasons from 2016 to 2019.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first award in the 2007-08 season with Man Utd before going on to win it three more times with Real Madrid.

The first player to win the award while at an English club was Liverpool's Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he scored 32 goals for Liverpool.

The award has seen a new winner in every one of the last three seasons.

Erling Haaland scooped the prize for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record-equaling 36 goals (72 points). Harry Kane earned his maiden Golden Shoe with the same total for Bayern Munich the following year.

Kylian Mbappe is the reigning holder of the award after scoring 31 goals (62 points) for Real Madrid in 2024-25.

Now, the same trio are competing at the summit of the leaderboard again this season, with Kane presently out in front the pack.