The Ballon d’Or is the most prestigious individual award in football, the closest thing the sport has to a most valuable player trophy. Every year it crowns the best player in the world, and the list of names who have lifted it reads like a history of the game itself. But how long has it been around, who has won it the most, and which legends are on the list?
From Stanley Matthews in 1956 to Ousmane Dembélé in 2025, nearly 70 years of winners tell the story of football’s greatest eras, from the European masters of the 1970s to the Messi and Ronaldo duopoly that defined a generation.
The full list of every winner is below, along with a ranking of the players who have won it most. Take a look, then we’ll break down how the award works and the records worth knowing.
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What Is the Ballon d’Or?
The Ballon d’Or (French for “Golden Ball”) was created in 1956 by the French magazine France Football to honor the best player of the year. Journalists Gabriel Hanot and Jacques Ferran introduced the concept, and it quickly became the sport’s benchmark individual honor.
For its first few decades the award was open only to European players, then to any player at a European club, before going fully global in 1995. Today it recognizes the best player in the world regardless of nationality or league.
How the Voting Works
The winner is chosen by a vote of journalists, one from each of the top-ranked nations in the FIFA rankings. The process starts with a 30-player shortlist drawn up by France Football. Each voting journalist then ranks their top five players from that shortlist, based on the previous season’s performance.
Points are awarded on a sliding scale (6 for a first-place vote, 4 for second, 3 for third, 2 for fourth, and 1 for fifth), and the player with the most total points wins. Voters are asked to weigh three things: individual performance, team success, and conduct on the pitch.
Who Has Won the Most?
Lionel Messi stands alone at the top with eight Ballon d’Or wins, a record that looked unthinkable when the award began. Cristiano Ronaldo is next with five, and the two of them combined to win all but one award between 2008 and 2017, the most dominant individual era the sport has seen.
Behind them, three all-time greats share the mark for most wins in the pre-Messi era: Johan Cruyff, Michel Platini, and Marco van Basten, each with three. Platini is also notable for winning his three in a row from 1983 to 1985, a feat only Messi has matched among multiple winners.
Notable Firsts and Records
A few milestones stand out across the award’s history. Stanley Matthews of Blackpool was the very first winner in 1956, at age 41. Lev Yashin remains the only goalkeeper ever to win it, in 1963.
The award was not handed out in 2020, when France Football canceled the ceremony during the COVID-19 pandemic, the only year since 1956 without a winner. And in 2025, Ousmane Dembélé became the seventh French player to win, capping a season in which he led Paris Saint-Germain to their first Champions League title and a domestic treble.
The Bottom Line
For nearly 70 years, the Ballon d’Or has served as football’s definitive measure of individual greatness. Messi’s eight and Ronaldo’s five define the modern record books, but the trophy’s history stretches back through Cruyff, Platini, Beckenbauer, and the European legends who built the game’s golden ages.
With Messi and Ronaldo now past their primes, the award has entered a wide-open new era, and the next decade of winners will start writing the next chapter of that history.