Kane Wins The Ballon D’Or In London, First Englishman Since Owen

LONDON — Harry Kane won the Ballon d’Or on Monday night, the first Englishman voted the world’s best player since Michael Owen in 2001, at a ceremony staged at the London Palladium — the first time the award has been presented outside France.

The Winner

Kane’s case was arithmetic: 73 goals in 65 matches for club and country last season, and a league-and-cup double with Bayern Munich. He finished ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal in the voting, and also took the Gerd Müller Trophy, the award for the year’s best striker. At 33, he is England’s captain and its record goalscorer; the Ballon d’Or is the first global individual prize of his career.

The English Line

The wait had become a standing fact of English football. The line of English winners runs Stanley Matthews in 1956, Bobby Charlton in 1966, Kevin Keegan in 1978 and 1979, and Michael Owen in 2001 — and then stops for a quarter of a century, through the years when the award belonged to Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. Kane’s own road ran underneath that drought: he left Tottenham in 2023 as the club’s record scorer and England’s, still without a major team trophy, and won the European Golden Shoe in his first season at Bayern. The league-and-cup double last season ended the trophy wait. The Ballon d’Or, a year later, ends the other one.

The Women’s Award

Alexia Putellas won the women’s Ballon d’Or for the third time. She captained Barcelona to a quadruple last season before signing this summer with London City Lionesses — which meant both of the night’s principal winners were, in different ways, London stories on the night the ceremony came to London.

The Rest Of The Night

The Kopa Trophy for the best young player went to Lamine Yamal — his third in a row — and to Vicky López. The Yashin Trophy for the best goalkeepers went to Unai Simón and Cata Coll. The Cruyff Trophy for the best coaches went to Luis de la Fuente and Pere Romeu. Charlyn Corral of Pachuca shared the Gerd Müller honours with Kane. Paris Saint-Germain were named men’s club of the year and Barcelona women’s club of the year, and Bukayo Saka received the Socrates Award. Eight of the night’s 13 awards went to Spanish players, coaches or clubs. The ceremony marked 70 years since Stanley Matthews, an Englishman, won the first Ballon d’Or.

The Leak

The evening had one farce. Hours before the ceremony, the Ballon d’Or’s own website published pre-written articles announcing the winner — in three versions, naming Kane, Yamal and Mbappé in turn, the standard practice of preparing each outcome in advance. The pages were taken down, but not before screenshots had set off a round of leak stories that the ceremony itself then had to overtake.

Sources: USA Today, CNN, The Times and Sporting News, October 26, 2026.