How Ballon d'Or voting works: points, jury and tie-breakers
How Ballon d'Or voting works: 100 journalists rank 10 of 30 nominees, points run 15 to 1, plus the criteria, tie-breakers, other awards and record winners.
Why it matters
The Ballon d'Or is decided by a points ballot with set rules, and knowing them shows why a consistent contender can beat a more spectacular one.
One hundred journalists decide the men’s Ballon d’Or, one from each of the top 100 nations in FIFA’s men’s world ranking. Each ranks 10 players from a shortlist of 30, points are added up, and the highest total wins football’s best-known individual award.
Quick answer: Ballon d’Or voting works on a points ballot. Every juror ranks 10 of the 30 nominees, scoring 15 points for first, then 12, 10, 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. The men’s jury has 100 journalists and the women’s jury 50. A tie is broken by counting first-place votes, then second-place votes, and so on.
That is the whole mechanism. The arguments every October come from what sits around it: which season counts, what the jurors are told to value, and how a points scale can turn a close race into a landslide or the reverse.
Who votes for the Ballon d’Or?
The panel is made up only of football journalists. Since the reform of 2022, France Football, the French magazine that created the award, picks one journalist per country from the top 100 nations in the FIFA men’s ranking. The women’s award uses the top 50 nations in the FIFA women’s ranking, so its jury is half the size.
Players, coaches and national team captains do not vote. Coaches and captains had ballots in earlier years, but since 2016 the vote has been journalists only.
Limiting the jury to higher-ranked football nations was meant to cut out ballots from countries with little coverage of the elite European game. It also means a country such as Brazil or Japan gets exactly the same say as a much smaller football nation that sits at, say, 95th in the ranking.
How the shortlist and the ballot work
The jurors do not write in any name they like. They receive an official list of 30 nominees, drawn up by the organizers, and choose 10 of them in order.
| Ballot position | Points |
|---|---|
| 1st | 15 |
| 2nd | 12 |
| 3rd | 10 |
| 4th | 8 |
| 5th | 7 |
| 6th | 5 |
| 7th | 4 |
| 8th | 3 |
| 9th | 2 |
| 10th | 1 |
Source: TNT Sports and beIN Sports, 2026.
With 100 jurors, the most a man can score is 1,500 points, which would mean first place on every ballot. A player ranked second by every juror would finish on 1,200.
The steep top of the scale matters more than people tend to assume. First place on a ballot is worth three points more than second; ninth is worth one more than tenth. Take a divisive favorite who is first on 40 ballots and fourth on the other 60. That adds up to 1,080 points, which loses to a rival ranked second by all 100 jurors. Being everybody’s second choice can beat being half the jury’s first.
What the jury is told to judge
France Football gives jurors three criteria, in this order of importance, according to TNT Sports and beIN Sports:
- Individual performances, including how decisive and impressive a player was.
- Collective performances and titles, with both club and national team counted.
- Class and fair play.
There is no weighting formula. Each juror reads the criteria and applies personal judgment, which is why two respected voters can submit very different lists.
The award also used to look at a calendar year. Since 2022 it covers a European football season instead. For the 2026 award the men’s reference period ran from August 3, 2025, to July 19, 2026, the date of the 2026 World Cup final, so the tournament in the United States, Canada and Mexico counted in full. ESPN reported that the women’s period ran to August 16, 2026, the date of the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations final. Voting for 2026 closed on September 28, TNT Sports reported.
How are Ballon d’Or ties broken?
If two players finish level on points, the one with more first-place votes wins. If they are still level, second-place votes are compared, then third-place votes, and so on down the ballot, according to TNT Sports and beIN Sports.
France Football’s editor-in-chief acts as organizer and settles any dispute over the vote, TNT Sports reported. In practice a tie at the top is very unlikely with 100 ballots and a spread of 10 point values.
The other awards on the night
The ceremony now hands out a full set of trophies, and they are not all decided the same way.
The Kopa Trophy, named after the French forward Raymond Kopa, goes to the best player aged under 21, with men’s and women’s versions. Some 2026 coverage, including TNT Sports, billed it as Young Talent of the Year. TNT Sports reported that the men’s prize is voted for by former Ballon d’Or winners, and the women’s by a separate panel of former women’s winners and other figures from the women’s game.
The Yashin Trophy, named after the Soviet goalkeeper Lev Yashin, is for the best goalkeeper. Yashin is still the only goalkeeper to win the Ballon d’Or itself, in 1963.
The Gerd Müller Trophy honors the leading scorer, counting goals for club and country. It is the one prize with no vote at all: the statistics decide it. Harry Kane took the 2026 men’s award with 73 goals in the season, ESPN reported.
The Johan Cruyff Trophy goes to the coach of the year, again with men’s and women’s winners. The coach awards and Club of the Year arrived with UEFA’s involvement in 2024, and TNT Sports reported that the Ballon d’Or juries vote on them.
The Socrates Award, named after the Brazilian midfielder and doctor Sócrates, recognizes humanitarian and social work by a player. It is chosen by the organizers rather than by the jury.
The women’s Ballon d’Or has existed since 2018, when Norway’s Ada Hegerberg won the first one. Its voting system is the same as the men’s, with the smaller jury of 50.
From France Football’s idea to a UEFA gala
The award was created by France Football journalists Gabriel Hanot and Jacques Ferran, and its first winner was England’s Stanley Matthews, then 41.
- 1956: France Football launches the award for European players. Stanley Matthews wins.
- 1995: Players of any nationality at European clubs become eligible. Liberia’s George Weah wins that year, the first non-European winner.
- 2007: The award opens to players worldwide.
- 2010 to 2015: It merges with FIFA’s World Player of the Year as the FIFA Ballon d’Or, before FIFA returns to its own award.
- 2018: The women’s Ballon d’Or is created; Ada Hegerberg wins.
- 2020: No award is given because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- 2022: The award switches to a season format and a jury from the top 100 FIFA-ranked nations.
- 3 Nov 2023: UEFA and Groupe Amaury, the owner of France Football and the sports daily L’Équipe, announce they will co-organize the Ballon d’Or from 2024.
- 26 Oct 2026: The 70th edition is held at the London Palladium, the first ceremony outside Paris, chosen partly to honor Matthews.
The split of duties under the UEFA deal is precise. Groupe Amaury owns the brand and runs the vote, which both parties said would stay “unchanged and independent.” UEFA brings football expertise, sells the global commercial rights and stages the gala. UEFA dropped its own men’s player of the year award, handed out every August, as part of the deal.
Who has won the most Ballon d’Or awards?
Lionel Messi’s record looks safe for a long time.
| Player | Country | Wins | Years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lionel Messi | Argentina | 8 | 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2023 |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | Portugal | 5 | 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017 |
| Johan Cruyff | Netherlands | 3 | 1971, 1973, 1974 |
| Michel Platini | France | 3 | 1983, 1984, 1985 |
| Marco van Basten | Netherlands | 3 | 1988, 1989, 1992 |
Source: Sports Illustrated and Wikipedia winners lists, October 2026.
On the women’s side, Spain’s Aitana Bonmatí won three in a row from 2023 to 2025. Alexia Putellas, also of Spain, won in 2021 and 2022, and added a third on October 26, 2026.
Kane and Putellas: the 2026 result
At the London Palladium on October 26, 2026, Bayern Munich and England striker Harry Kane won the men’s Ballon d’Or and Alexia Putellas won the women’s award for the third time, ESPN and CBS Sports reported. Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal won the men’s Kopa Trophy for a third straight year.
Why the vote keeps getting criticized
The best-known complaint is that the award favors attackers. Fabio Cannavaro, in 2006, is the last defender to win it, and Yashin’s 1963 win has never been repeated by a goalkeeper. Goals and highlight moments are easier for 100 journalists in 100 countries to see than a center-back’s positioning over 50 matches. Critics regularly call it a popularity contest; supporters reply that it was always a journalists’ prize, not a statistical one.
There is also a structural point that rarely makes the coverage. A season-based award with a World Cup inside the window will often reward the tournament: the same month of football counts for every juror, while a domestic league season in Germany or Spain is followed closely by only some of them. Rodri’s win in 2024, as a holding midfielder, shows the pattern is not absolute.
Watch for: The full ranking of all 30 nominees comes out with the result. Where the gaps between places are published, they show whether a win was a landslide or a split jury, which the order alone hides.
The criteria rarely change, so the most useful way to read a future Ballon d’Or race is to start from the reference dates. Check which tournaments fall inside the August-to-July window, then look at which contenders were decisive in them. For a recent look at two of 2026’s main contenders sharing a pitch, see our report on Barcelona vs Real Madrid in El Clásico, and for the rule that shapes how forwards score, our guide to the offside rule in football.
