Ibyimana Cofi
England and Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane has won the Ballon d’Or, awarded to the best football player in the world for the 2025–2026 season, following an outstanding campaign in which he scored numerous goals and helped his team win several trophies.
The 33-year-old English forward beat Lamine Yamal of FC Barcelona, who won the World Cup, and Kylian Mbappé of Real Madrid to claim the prestigious award for the first time in his career.
Kane, who had also won the award for the best striker, becomes the first Bayern Munich player to win the Ballon d’Or since Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who claimed the award in 1980 and 1981. He is also the first English player to win the award since Michael Owen in 2001.
During the 2025–2026 season, Harry Kane scored 73 goals in 65 appearances for Bayern Munich and the England national team, helping the German club win three trophies: the Bundesliga title, the German Cup (DFB-Pokal), and the German Super Cup.
In the Bundesliga, Kane scored 36 goals in 31 matches, helping Bayern Munich comfortably secure the league title. The club finished the season with just one defeat, collecting 16 more points than Borussia Dortmund, who finished second.
In the UEFA Champions League, the striker scored 14 goals in 13 appearances. However, Vincent Kompany’s Bayern Munich were eliminated in the semi-finals by Paris Saint-Germain, who went on to win the competition.
Harry Kane also demonstrated his exceptional ability in the German Cup, scoring a hat-trick in the final as Bayern Munich defeated Stuttgart 3–0 to lift the trophy.
In the history of football in the 21st century, Lionel Messi is the only player to have scored more goals than Kane in a single season. Messi scored 82 goals during the 2011–2012 season, while Kane managed 73.
In the summer of 2026, Harry Kane also captained England at the World Cup hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, helping the national team finish in third place.
The striker scored six goals during the tournament, including two that helped England defeat the Democratic Republic of the Congo 2–1 in the round of 16.
Kane also scored a crucial goal in England’s 3–2 victory over Mexico, one of the tournament’s host nations, in the quarter-finals.
In addition to helping his national team progress deep into the competition, his impressive performances for Bayern Munich made him one of the most talked-about players in the race for the 2025–2026 Ballon d’Or.
Harry Kane began his football career in Tottenham Hotspur’s youth teams, spending 14 seasons with the senior team before moving to Bayern Munich in the summer of 2023 in a transfer worth more than €100 million.
Although he has spent only three years at Bayern Munich, Kane has already made a significant impact at the club. He currently ranks seventh among the club’s all-time leading goalscorers.
He also became the fastest player in Bundesliga history to reach 100 league goals, achieving the milestone after just 98 appearances.
At Tottenham Hotspur, Kane is the club’s all-time leading goalscorer, having scored 280 goals. In Premier League history, he ranks second among the competition’s all-time leading scorers with 213 goals, behind Alan Shearer, who holds the record with 260.
