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The competition for the Golden Boot trophy is heating up as the current season approaches its halfway mark.

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

The prodigious Norwegian striker is back in the running this season, but encounters tough rivalry from Bayern Munich marksman Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of matches left to play, other talents still have time to throw their hat into the fray.

Understanding the European Golden Shoe Award?

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

Since the 1997-98, the award has been administered by European Sports Media, which introduced a weighted points system. Under this method, a player's goals are multiplied by a designated multiplier based on the UEFA coefficient of their domestic competition.

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

For competitions ranked sixth to 22nd in UEFA's rankings, 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 multiple occasions in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 season dictates that in the case of a tie, the award goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.

If the tie remains, the next deciding factor is the number of assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only after these criteria are used would the prize be split.

Identifying the Primary Contenders?

As it stands, a three-horse race exists for the 2025-26 Golden Shoe, with the three previous winners split by just a single goal.

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

Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda is joint-fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this season.

The rest of the top 10 is made up of players from leagues that function on a calendar year schedule.

Reviewing Past Winners

Throughout its nearly six-decade history, the Golden Shoe has been claimed by some of football's most iconic stars.

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

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has won the record number of Golden Shoes, collecting the honor on six separate occasions during his 17-year tenure at FC Barcelona.

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

Portuguese superstar 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 netted thirty-two goals for Liverpool.

The prize has seen a different winner in every one of the last three seasons.

Erling Haaland won 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 same total for Bayern Munich the following year.

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

Now, the very three players are vying at the summit of the leaderboard again this campaign, with Kane currently leading the way.