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The battle for the prestigious Golden Shoe is reaching a fever pitch as the current season approaches its midway point.

With a different winner in each of the last three campaigns, the prize remains up for grabs. Manchester City star Erling Haaland was the most recent Premier League-based forward to win the trophy back in the 2022-23 season.

The prolific Norwegian goal-scorer is once again in the running this season, but encounters stiff competition from German Bundesliga forward Harry Kane and Real Madrid phenomenon Kylian Mbappe. With plenty of games left to play, other talents still have time to enter the fray.

What is the Golden Shoe?

The European Golden Shoe was introduced in the 1967-68 by the France-based publication L'Equipe to celebrate the highest scorer in domestic league matches from a European top division league.

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

Goals scored in Europe's top five leagues—the English Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Italian Serie A, and Ligue 1—are valued at two points apiece.

For leagues ranked from sixth to twenty-second in UEFA rankings, such as the Portuguese league, goals are worth 1.5 points. Goals in all other European leagues carry one point.

While the honor has been shared on multiple instances in the past, a rule change from the 2019-20 season dictates that in the event of a points tie, the award goes to the player with the fewest minutes played.

If the deadlock persists, the subsequent deciding factor is the number of assists, followed by the least goals from the penalty spot. Only after these tiebreakers are exhausted would the prize be shared.

Identifying the Leading Challengers?

Currently, a three-way race exists for the current season's Golden Shoe, with the trio of previous winners split by just a single goal.

• Harry Kane (England 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 one back on 18 goals (36 points) in 18 La Liga games.

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

Dutch side Feyenoord striker Ayase Ueda is joint-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 Past Winners

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

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

Argentine maestro Lionel Messi has secured the most Golden Shoes, collecting the honor on six separate times 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 only player to date to win it in three consecutive seasons from 2016-17 to 2018-19.

Portuguese megastar Cristiano Ronaldo claimed his first award in the 2007-08 season with Manchester United before proceeding to win it three more times with Real Madrid.

The inaugural player to win the award while at an English club was Ian Rush in 1983-84, when he netted thirty-two goals for Liverpool FC.

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

Erling Haaland claimed the award for the first time in 2022-23, scoring a Premier League record-equaling thirty-six goals (72 points). Harry Kane secured his maiden Golden Shoe with the identical total for Bayern Munich the following season.

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

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