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The competition for the Golden Boot trophy is heating up as the 2025-26 season approaches its mid-season juncture.

With a different winner in every one of the last three campaigns, the prize remains highly contested. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the last Premier League-based striker to secure the trophy back in the 2022-23 season.

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the mix this campaign, but encounters tough competition from Bayern Munich forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of matches remaining, other talents still have an opportunity to throw their hat into the fray.

What is the Golden Shoe?

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

Since the 1997-98 season, the prize has been administered by European Sports Media, which introduced a points-based scoring 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 English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and French Ligue 1—are worth two points each.

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

While the honor has been shared on multiple occasions in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 dictates that in the case of a points tie, the trophy goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.

If the deadlock persists, the subsequent tiebreaker is the number of league assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only if these criteria are used would the prize be shared.

Identifying the Leading Contenders?

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

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

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

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

The rest of the top 10 is made up of players from leagues that function on a January-to-December schedule.

A Look at Past Winners

Throughout its 59-year history, the Golden Shoe has been won by some of football's biggest legends.

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

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has secured the record number of Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six separate occasions during his long 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 successive seasons from 2016 to 2019.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first award in the 2007-08 season with Man Utd before going on to win it on three further occasions with Real Madrid.

The inaugural 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 FC.

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

Erling Haaland won the prize 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 identical total for Bayern Munich the following year.

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

Now, the same three players are battling at the summit of the leaderboard again this season, with Kane presently leading the pack.