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The competition for the Golden Boot trophy is reaching a fever pitch as the 2025-26 season passes its midway point.

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

The prolific Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the hunt this campaign, but faces formidable competition from Bayern Munich forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With many matches left to play, other talents still have time to enter the fray.

Understanding the European Golden Shoe Award?

The European Golden Shoe was inaugurated in the 1967-68 by the France-based newspaper L'Equipe to celebrate the leading scorer in domestic league matches from a European top division league.

Since the 1997-98, the prize has been overseen by European Sports Media, which implemented a points-based points system. Under this format, a player's tallies are multiplied by a specific coefficient based on the UEFA coefficient of their domestic competition.

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

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

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

If the deadlock remains, the subsequent tiebreaker is the number of assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only after these criteria are used would the award be shared.

Identifying the Leading Challengers?

Currently, a three-horse tussle exists for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of most recent winners split by just a solitary goal.

• Harry Kane (English 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 just behind on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga matches.

In fourth is Darko Lemajic of Latvia's side RFS, who has scored 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 matches this season.

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

Reviewing Past Recipients

Throughout its nearly six-decade existence, the Golden Shoe has been won by some of football's biggest legends.

Portuguese legend Eusébio claimed the first-ever trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for Benfica. He then 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 long spell at FC Barcelona.

Messi established the benchmark for most goals in a single season with fifty in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the only player to ever to win it in three straight seasons from 2016 to 2019.

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

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

The award has seen a new winner in each of the past three seasons.

Erling Haaland claimed the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane earned his first Golden Shoe with the same total for Bayern Munich the following season.

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

Now, the same three players are vying at the top of the leaderboard again this season, with Kane currently out in front the way.