Who is Leading in the Pursuit for the Golden Shoe?

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

With a different winner in every one of the last three campaigns, the award remains highly contested. Premier League star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based player to secure the award back in 2022-23.

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the hunt this campaign, but encounters tough competition from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of matches remaining, other players still have an opportunity to enter the fray.

What is the European Golden Shoe Award?

The Golden Boot award was inaugurated in the 1967-68 season by the French publication L'Equipe to recognize the top goalscorer in domestic league matches from a European top-flight league.

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

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

For competitions ranked sixth to 22nd in UEFA's list, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth 1.5 points. Goals in lower-ranked European leagues carry one point.

While the award has been jointly won on multiple instances in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 dictates that in the case of a tie, the award goes to the player with the least minutes played.

If the tie remains, the next deciding factor is the total of assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only after these tiebreakers are exhausted would the award be split.

Who are the Leading Contenders?

Currently, a three-horse battle is underway for the current season's 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 fixtures.
• 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 games.

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

Dutch side Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda is tied for fifth with 18 goals (27 points) from 17 Eredivisie matches this season.

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

A Look at Previous Winners

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

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

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has won the most Golden Shoes, collecting the honor on six occasions 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 first and only player to ever to win it in three successive seasons from 2016 to 2019.

Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first award in the 2007-08 with Manchester United before going on to win it on three further occasions 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 netted thirty-two goals for Liverpool.

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

Erling Haaland won the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record 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 holder of the award after scoring thirty-one goals (62 points) for Real Madrid in 2024-25.

Now, the same trio are battling at the top of the leaderboard again this campaign, with Kane currently out in front the way.