Harry Kane is the new Ballon d’Or winner, and now we know how close it was. The full voting results were published on Friday, and they show the Bayern Munich striker finished just 28 points ahead of Kylian Mbappé.
Kane got 1,055 points. Mbappé, the Real Madrid forward, got 1,027. Lamine Yamal of Barcelona was third with 881 points.
How the vote worked
The jury is made up of 100 journalists, one from each of the top 100 nations in the FIFA ranking. Each of them picks a top 10 from the list of 30 nominees. First place is worth 15 points, second is worth 12 and third is worth 10, then 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 for the rest of the top 10.
Kane was first on 40 ballots. Mbappé was first on 23. Yamal topped 13 ballots and Rodri, who finished fourth with 726 points, topped 10. Lionel Messi was fifth.
Small things made the difference. Kane was left out of the top 10 by two voters. Mbappé was left out by three.
One of the tightest races ever
A gap of 28 points is very small for this award. It has been ranked as the fourth-closest vote in the 70-year history of the Ballon d’Or. It is the closest since 2019, when Lionel Messi beat Virgil van Dijk by seven points.
Last year was very different. Ousmane Dembélé won in 2025 with 1,380 points, more than 300 clear of Yamal.
Kane is the first English player to win the award since Michael Owen in 2001. He has won Golden Boots in England, in Germany and at the 2018 World Cup, but the Ballon d’Or was missing until this week.
Putellas wins for a third time
In the women’s vote, Alexia Putellas won for the third time with 618 points. Ewa Pajor was second, 86 points behind, and Khadija Shaw was third with 344.
Our take
Mbappé fans will feel hard done by. He was named on fewer ballots than Kane and still finished only 28 points behind, so a few voters changing their order would have changed the result.
But Kane’s win is fair. He was the first name on far more ballots than anyone else, and he was in the top 10 of 98 of the 100 voters. For a player who was told for years that he needed trophies to be called great, this is a big answer.
The next test comes fast. Kane and Bayern host Borussia Dortmund in Der Klassiker on Saturday.
Did the right man win the Ballon d’Or? Kane or Mbappé? Tell us in the comments.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Harry Kane by Bryan Berlin (CC BY-SA 4.0), Kylian Mbappé by Bryan Berlin (CC BY-SA 4.0), Alexia Putellas by MichaelEmilio (CC BY-SA 4.0).
