Twenty-five years of waiting are over. Harry Kane is the 2026 Ballon d’Or winner, the first Englishman to take the award since Michael Owen in 2001. He collected it in London, which is fitting, since this was the first Ballon d’Or ceremony ever held in London, staged to mark 70 years since Stanley Matthews won the first one.
Why Harry Kane won the 2026 Ballon d’Or
Mostly because he scored an absurd number of goals.
- He scored 61 goals in 51 games for Bayern Munich, 36 of them in the Bundesliga, which earned him a second European Golden Shoe. football360
- Across club and country he scored 73 goals in 65 matches.
- He won the Bundesliga, the German Cup and the German Super Cup.
- At the World Cup he scored six goals and became England’s all-time top scorer at the tournament, and England finished third.
Earlier on the night, he was also given the Gerd Müller Award for the world’s best striker. That made two awards in one evening, with the big one still to come.
The move to Munich paid off
Kane’s career took a different path from most English stars. He left Tottenham for Bayern Munich to chase team trophies after years without major silverware, and the individual honours followed. Not long ago he was well down the list. He finished 13th in the 2025 Ballon d’Or voting. A year later he won it.
The wait for an English winner is over
English players have come close for a quarter of a century. Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard and, most recently, Jude Bellingham all got near, but none was awarded the trophy. Kane is the one who finally got there.
Check out the rest of the results here
Image : AFP
