The Ballon d’Or is meant to be football’s grand individual celebration, the night when one player gets to stand above the rest. Every year, the arguments begin before the ceremony and continue long after it. But the 2026 edition managed to create a different kind of drama before the main event had even got going.
The official website published articles identifying Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal as winners. Yes, three different players. One award. Somebody had apparently forgotten that a Ballon d’Or is not a buy-one-get-two-free offer.
The organisers said the profiles had been prepared in advance and published accidentally. That explanation is possible, and the leak alone is not proof that the result was manipulated. Still, it was an astonishing way to handle an award whose entire appeal depends on keeping people guessing until the winner is announced.
Then the ceremony in London was delayed by traffic. The night was already making headlines for the wrong reasons, and the organisers were having a difficult time keeping the focus on the football. At some point, you have to wonder whether the Ballon d’Or needs a new trophy or just a better website administrator.
But the winners did eventually emerge, and the actual results deserve more than being buried beneath the chaos.
Ballon d’Or: The full list of winners
The Ballon d’Or 2026 ceremony took place on October 26 at London’s Palladium. It was the 70th edition of the Ballon d’Or and the first time the event was held outside France.
| Award | Winner |
|---|---|
| Men’s Ballon d’Or | Harry Kane |
| Women’s Ballon d’Or | Alexia Putellas |
| Men’s Kopa Trophy | Lamine Yamal |
| Women’s Kopa Trophy | Vicky López |
| Men’s Yashin Trophy | Unai Simón |
| Women’s Yashin Trophy | Cata Coll |
| Men’s Coach of the Year | Luis de la Fuente |
| Women’s Coach of the Year | Pere Romeu |
| Men’s Club of the Year | Paris Saint-Germain |
| Women’s Club of the Year | Barcelona |
| Men’s Gerd Müller Trophy | Harry Kane |
| Women’s Gerd Müller Trophy | Charlyn Corral |
| Sócrates Award | Bukayo Saka |
Ballon d’Or 2026: So, who actually won the big one?
Harry Kane finished ahead of Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal in the men’s voting. Alexia Putellas won the women’s award for the third time in her career.
Kane scored 73 goals for club and country during the 2025–26 season, helping Bayern Munich win a domestic treble. He also finished as the Bundesliga’s top scorer for the third consecutive season and scored 14 Champions League goals. He is the first Englishman to win the men’s award since Michael Owen in 2001.
There is a funny little twist to Kane’s career here. For years, the conversation around him was about the trophies he hadn’t won. Now he has silverware with Bayern and a goal tally that would make most strikers look like they have been doing the job part-time. The Ballon d’Or argument is a separate one, but nobody can claim he turned up this season empty-handed.
That doesn’t mean the debate is over. Mbappé finished second and Yamal third, and their supporters will have their own reasons for believing the result should have gone differently. The Ballon d’Or has never been a maths exam with one indisputable answer. If it were, football fans would still find a way to appeal the marking.
Virat Kohli’s special message for Harry Kane
Virat Kohli had a lovely message for Harry Kane after the England captain won the Ballon d’Or. Kohli congratulated his friend on X and praised the hard work and resilience it took to reach the top of his sport.
“Harry my friend, you deserve every bit of this award for your resilience, hard work and honesty with which you’ve carried yourself through all these years playing football at the top.”
Kohli also sent his best wishes to Kane’s family. It’s nice to see two athletes from completely different sports share this kind of bond. They know what it takes to keep going when the expectations never stop, and sometimes a message from someone who understands that pressure means more than another round of congratulations.
Ballon d’Or 2026: How much money does the winner get?
Not a fixed cash prize from the Ballon d’Or organisers. The award itself comes with a trophy and the prestige of winning, rather than an official cheque.
The financial benefits can come afterwards. A win can make a player more attractive to sponsors, improve their commercial value and trigger a bonus if their contract contains a clause for winning the award. Those arrangements are private, so there is no reliable universal figure to attach to Kane’s victory.
In other words, don’t expect the organisers to hand him a suitcase of cash. The trophy is the headline; the money, if there is more of it, depends on deals made elsewhere. Football has enough money floating around that winning an award can still pay off without the award itself paying you.
Ballon d’Or 2026: The website managed to create its own controversy
This was the part that made the night look ridiculous. Before the ceremony, the official Ballon d’Or website published separate articles naming Kane, Mbappé and Yamal as the winner. All three stories were subsequently taken down.
The organisers’ explanation was that the articles had been prepared in advance and published accidentally. That is possible. But it is also the kind of mistake that invites suspicion, especially when the award is decided by voting and the entire point of the ceremony is to reveal the result at the right moment.
To be clear, the leak does not prove that the voting was fixed. There is no evidence from the publication mistake alone to support that claim. But even if it was just a technical error, it robbed the announcement of some suspense and gave fans a very easy target.
The website also prematurely revealed parts of the rankings below the top ten, according to reporting by AS USA.
And then the ceremony was delayed by 45 minutes amid traffic problems in London.
One mistake can happen to anyone. A night full of them is harder to shrug off. The players had spent an entire season giving people reasons to talk about football, and the organisers managed to give them a competing story involving broken timing and premature headlines.
Was the result controversial too?
Of course. It is the Ballon d’Or. If the voters announced that every nominee had won, supporters would still complain that their favourite had received the wrong trophy.
Kane’s season gives him a strong case: 73 goals, a domestic treble and another prolific Champions League campaign. Mbappé and Yamal had their own credentials, and the final ranking will inevitably lead to arguments about whether goals, trophies, consistency or individual influence should count most.
Those arguments are fair. What isn’t fair is treating the website leak as proof that the award was rigged. The organisers made a mess of the announcement, but that is not the same thing as evidence that the result was dishonest.
The 2026 ceremony was supposed to be a celebration of the award’s 70-year history, with the London venue paying tribute to Sir Stanley Matthews, the first winner in 1956. Instead, the website gave fans a reason to question the organisation before the main prize had even been announced.
And that’s the part worth remembering. There were historic wins, excellent seasons and players who deserved to be recognised. There was also an official website that appeared to hand one award to three different people.
The Ballon d’Or has survived decades of arguments about who deserves to win. It can survive a website blunder too. But next year, perhaps the organisers should try announcing the winner once, at the ceremony, after the envelope is opened. Apparently, that is the one part of the evening that should not require a backup plan.
Amar Pal Singh Bhalla is a sports writer covering cricket, football and tennis.
Based in India, he has followed the game for the last few years and writes
match analysis, previews and features for Beyond The Score
