Players With the Most Ballon d’Or Awards: The Complete List
Updated October 27, 2026
Updated October 27, 2026
When Harry Kane lifted the 2026 Ballon d’Or at the London Palladium, he ended a 25-year wait for England. He was 33, the award had passed him by for a decade, and it took a 73-goal season to change that.
For most players, one Ballon d’Or is the peak of a career. For a small group, winning it became almost routine. Only ten men have won it more than once, and two of them account for 13 of the trophies between them.
Nobody else comes close. Messi won four in a row from 2009 to 2012, which is still the longest winning streak in the award’s history. In that spell, Barcelona under Pep Guardiola won more or less everything, and Messi had a 91-goal calendar year in 2012.
While arch nemesis Cristiano Ronaldo took three of the next five awards, Messi had to wait until 2015 to claim his fourth Ballon D'Or. His last three wins were each tied to a big moment: 2019 after a 51-goal season at Barcelona, 2021 after he finally won the Copa América with Argentina, and 2023 after winning a long-awaited World Cup in Qatar. Seven of his eight came as a Barcelona player. His tally may never be beaten.
Ronaldo’s first Ballon D'Or came at Manchester United in 2008, the year he led United to a Premier League and Champions League double, scoring 42 goals in the process. However, that tally would pale into insignificance after the Portuguese superstar made a then record £80 million ($120 million) move to Real Madrid.
His generation's greatest goalscorer, Ronaldo scored 55 (2013), 51 (2014), 51 (2016) and 42 (2017) goals in his next four Ballon D'Or winning seasons, leading Los Merengues to 4 Champions League titles and Portugal to a European Championship in 2016.
Cruyff was the first player to win the award three times. His first two came at Ajax in 1971 and 1973, during the club’s run of three straight European Cups. The third came in 1974, a year after he’d joined Barcelona, where he would go on to become arguably the most influential figure in the club's history.
He led them to their first league title since 1960, then was named player of the tournament at the 1974 World Cup as the Netherlands’ Total Football side reached the final, becoming arguably the greatest side to never win the Jules Rimet trophy.
Platini won three in a row with Juventus, from 1983 to 1985, becoming the first player in the competition's history to do so. He was Serie A’s top scorer in each of those seasons, an incredible return for a midfielder.
His 1983-1984 season is still one of the great individual years in the history of the sport. In Serie A, he scored 20 goals in 28 games for Juve as the Bianconeri won Serie A and the Cup Winners' Cup, before he scored nine goals in five games as France won the European Championship on home soil, a tournament record that has never been beaten.
Everyone remembers that goal, but Van Basten was always more than just a highlight reel player. All of the Dutch legend's wins came during his time at Milan, where he scored twice in the 1989 European Cup final and finished as Serie A’s top scorer in the unbeaten 1991-92 season.
An ankle injury ended his career at 28.
Di Stéfano won in 1957 and 1959, right in the middle of Real Madrid’s run of five straight European Cups. He scored in all five of those finals, finishing with a hat-trick in the 7-3 win over Eintracht Frankfurt in 1960. Many still consider him the most complete player of his era, and one of the greatest of all time.
Beckenbauer is still the only defender to win the award twice. His first came in 1972, the year he captained West Germany to the European Championship, and his second in 1976 as Bayern Munich won a third straight European Cup. A sweeper who played like a midfielder, Der Kaiser redefined what a centre-half should look like in an age of tactical rigidity. Oddly, his World Cup year wasn’t one of his wins: Cruyff took the 1974 award even though West Germany beat the Netherlands in the final.
Keegan left Liverpool for Hamburg in 1977 and won the award in both of his first two years in Germany. In 1979 he led Hamburg to their first league title since 1960. He’s still England’s only multiple winner, and until Kane's victory in 2026, he was also the only Englishman to win it while playing abroad.
'King Kev' as he was affectionately known by Liverpool fans, would go on to have a successful managerial career, with his iconic Newcastle tenure arguably the highlight.
Rummenigge won back-to-back in 1980 and 1981. He finished as the Bundesliga’s top scorer in both seasons as Bayern won the title each time, and he added the 1980 European Championship with West Germany. For 45 years, he was the last Bayern player to win the award, until Kane's victory this year.
Ronaldo was 21 when he won in 1997, which makes him the youngest winner in the award’s history. He’d scored 47 goals for Barcelona the season before and then moved to Inter.
Serious knee injuries cost him most of the next three years, so his second win in 2002 was a true comeback: eight goals at the World Cup, including both in the final against Germany, as Brazil won their fifth title.
They were never eligible. Until 1995 the Ballon d’Or was open only to European players, and until 2007 non-Europeans could win only if they played for a European club. That rule is why two of the greatest players in history have no wins, and it’s why George Weah’s 1995 win at AC Milan, the first by a non-European, mattered so much.
Kane joins the long list of one-time winners. He’s the sixth English winner of the award and the fifth Englishman, after Stanley Matthews (1956), Bobby Charlton (1966), Keegan, Michael Owen (2001) and now Kane. He’s also one of the oldest winners ever. Only Matthews, Messi, Karim Benzema, Lev Yashin and Di Stéfano were older when they won.
His win also extends a run of five different winners in five years: Benzema, Messi, Rodri, Ousmane Dembélé and Kane. After the Messi-Ronaldo era, the award has gone back to being a race nobody owns.
The Ballon d’Or Féminin started in 2018, and it already has its own two-player rivalry. Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmatí have three wins each. Putellas won in 2021 and 2022, then Bonmatí won three straight from 2023 to 2025. Putellas drew level in 2026, after finishing her Barcelona career with a domestic clean sweep and a Women’s Champions League title.
Ada Hegerberg won the inaugural award and Megan Rapinoe won in 2019, but no one else has won more than once.
Nobody active right now is close to the top three. The more realistic question is who becomes the next two-time winner. Kylian Mbappé has finished on the podium several times without winning, including second behind Kane in 2026.
Lamine Yamal has won the Kopa Trophy for the best young player three years running, and history suggests that’s a strong pointer toward the senior award. Kane, Rodri and Dembélé each have one already, and all three would need another season like the one that won it.
Lionel Messi, with eight. Cristiano Ronaldo is second with five.
Yes. Michel Platini did it from 1983 to 1985, and Messi won four straight from 2009 to 2012.
Franz Beckenbauer, in 1972 and 1976.
Stanley Matthews, Bobby Charlton, Kevin Keegan (twice), Michael Owen and Harry Kane.
Alexia Putellas and Aitana Bonmatí, with three each.
No. France Football cancelled the 2020 edition because of the pandemic.
