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The competition for the Golden Boot trophy is heating up as the 2025-26 season passes its midway point.

With a different winner in each of the past three campaigns, the prize remains highly contested. Manchester City star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based striker to claim the trophy back in the 2022-23 season.

The prodigious Norwegian goal-scorer is back in the running this season, but encounters formidable competition from Bayern Munich marksman Harry Kane and Spanish La Liga superstar Kylian Mbappe. With many fixtures remaining, other players still have an opportunity to throw their hat into the contest.

Understanding the Golden Shoe?

The European Golden Shoe was introduced in the 1967-68 by the French publication L'Equipe to honor the top goalscorer in 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 points-based scoring system. Under this method, a player's goals are multiplied by a designated multiplier based on the UEFA coefficient of their league.

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

For competitions ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA 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 shared on multiple instances in the past, a regulation update from the 2019-20 season dictates that in the event of a tie, the trophy goes to the player with the least minutes played.

If the deadlock persists, the next tiebreaker is the total of assists, followed by the fewest penalties scored. Only if these criteria are used would the award be split.

Who are the Main Contenders?

Currently, a three-horse race is underway for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the three previous winners split by just a solitary 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 outings.
• Kylian Mbappe sits just behind on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga games.

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

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

The remainder of the current top ten is comprised of players from leagues that operate on a calendar year schedule.

Reviewing Previous Recipients

Throughout its nearly six-decade history, the Golden Shoe has been awarded to some of football's biggest names.

Portuguese icon Eusébio won the inaugural trophy in 1968, scoring forty-two goals for Benfica. He later secured the award for a second time in the 1972-73.

Argentine legend Lionel Messi has won the most Golden Shoes, collecting the award on six separate occasions during his 17-year tenure at Barcelona.

Messi established the record 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 2016-17 to 2018-19.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first award in the 2007-08 with Manchester United before proceeding to win it three more times 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 scored 32 goals for Liverpool FC.

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

Erling Haaland scooped the prize for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his first Golden Shoe with the same goal tally for Bayern Munich the following season.

Kylian Mbappe is the current winner of the award after scoring 31 goals (62 points) for Real Madrid in 2024-25.

Now, the same trio are battling at the top of the leaderboard once more this season, with Kane currently leading the pack.