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The contest for the Golden Boot trophy is intensifying as the 2025-26 season passes its midway point.

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

The prolific Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the mix this season, but encounters formidable competition from German Bundesliga marksman Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of fixtures remaining, other players still have an opportunity to enter the contest.

What is the Golden Shoe?

The European Golden Shoe was introduced in the 1967-68 season by the French newspaper L'Equipe to celebrate the highest scorer in domestic league matches from a European top-flight league.

Since the 1997-98 season, the prize has been overseen by European Sports Media, which introduced a weighted points system. Under this method, a player's tallies are weighted with a specific coefficient based on the UEFA coefficient of their league.

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

For leagues ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA's rankings, such as the Portuguese Primeira Liga, goals are worth 1.5 points. Goals in all other European leagues carry one point.

While the honor has been jointly won on multiple 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 tie persists, the next deciding factor is the total of assists, followed by the fewest goals from the penalty spot. Only if these criteria are exhausted would the prize be shared.

Identifying the Main Challengers?

As it stands, a three-way tussle is underway for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of most recent winners separated by just a single 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 games.

In fourth place is RFS striker Darko Lemajic of Latvian club RFS, who has scored 28 goals (28 points) across their 36 league games in 2025.

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

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

Reviewing Past Recipients

Throughout its 59-year existence, the Golden Shoe has been awarded to some of football's most iconic legends.

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

Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has won the most Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six separate times during his 17-year spell at Barcelona.

Messi set the benchmark for highest tally in a campaign with fifty in 2011-12 (100 points). He also became the first and only player to date to win it in three consecutive seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first award in the 2007-08 with Manchester United before proceeding to win it on three further occasions with Real Madrid.

The inaugural player to win the award while at an club in England was Liverpool's Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted 32 goals for Liverpool FC.

The award has seen a different winner in each of the last three seasons.

Erling Haaland scooped the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record-equaling thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his first Golden Shoe with the same goal tally for Bayern Munich the next 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 trio are battling at the summit of the leaderboard again this campaign, with Kane currently leading the way.