Every Ballon d'Or Winner (Full List by Year)

Lionel Messi has won the Ballon d’Or a record eight times, more than any player in the award’s history, with Cristiano Ronaldo second on five. The prize has been handed out almost every year since 1956, and the most recent winner on record is Manchester City’s Rodri, who took the 2024 award.

The Ballon d’Or is presented each year by the French magazine France Football to the player judged the best men’s footballer of the year. For most of its life it rarely went to the same name twice; then Messi and Ronaldo turned it into a two-man contest for a decade. Below is the full year-by-year list of winners, plus the ranking by total awards. Figures are as of the 2025 season.

Every Ballon d’Or winner by year

Here is the complete list of men’s Ballon d’Or winners from the first award in 1956 through 2024. The 2020 award was cancelled because of the pandemic.

Year	Winner	Country
1956	Stanley Matthews	England
1957	Alfredo Di Stefano	Spain
1958	Raymond Kopa	France
1959	Alfredo Di Stefano	Spain
1960	Luis Suarez	Spain
1961	Omar Sivori	Italy
1962	Josef Masopust	Czechoslovakia
1963	Lev Yashin	Soviet Union
1964	Denis Law	Scotland
1965	Eusebio	Portugal
1966	Bobby Charlton	England
1967	Florian Albert	Hungary
1968	George Best	Northern Ireland
1969	Gianni Rivera	Italy
1970	Gerd Muller	West Germany
1971	Johan Cruyff	Netherlands
1972	Franz Beckenbauer	West Germany
1973	Johan Cruyff	Netherlands
1974	Johan Cruyff	Netherlands
1975	Oleg Blokhin	Soviet Union
1976	Franz Beckenbauer	West Germany
1977	Allan Simonsen	Denmark
1978	Kevin Keegan	England
1979	Kevin Keegan	England
1980	Karl-Heinz Rummenigge	West Germany
1981	Karl-Heinz Rummenigge	West Germany
1982	Paolo Rossi	Italy
1983	Michel Platini	France
1984	Michel Platini	France
1985	Michel Platini	France
1986	Igor Belanov	Soviet Union
1987	Ruud Gullit	Netherlands
1988	Marco van Basten	Netherlands
1989	Marco van Basten	Netherlands
1990	Lothar Matthaus	West Germany
1991	Jean-Pierre Papin	France
1992	Marco van Basten	Netherlands
1993	Roberto Baggio	Italy
1994	Hristo Stoichkov	Bulgaria
1995	George Weah	Liberia
1996	Matthias Sammer	Germany
1997	Ronaldo	Brazil
1998	Zinedine Zidane	France
1999	Rivaldo	Brazil
2000	Luis Figo	Portugal
2001	Michael Owen	England
2002	Ronaldo	Brazil
2003	Pavel Nedved	Czech Republic
2004	Andriy Shevchenko	Ukraine
2005	Ronaldinho	Brazil
2006	Fabio Cannavaro	Italy
2007	Kaka	Brazil
2008	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal
2009	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2010	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2011	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2012	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2013	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal
2014	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal
2015	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2016	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal
2017	Cristiano Ronaldo	Portugal
2018	Luka Modric	Croatia
2019	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2020	Not awarded	—
2021	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2022	Karim Benzema	France
2023	Lionel Messi	Argentina
2024	Rodri	Spain

The 2025 Ballon d’Or is presented in the autumn, as it is every year, at the France Football ceremony in Paris.

Most Ballon d’Or wins: the all-time ranking

Two players have redrawn the record books. Before 2008, no one had won the prize more than three times.

Wins	Player	Years
8	Lionel Messi	2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021, 2023
5	Cristiano Ronaldo	2008, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017
3	Michel Platini	1983, 1984, 1985
3	Johan Cruyff	1971, 1973, 1974
3	Marco van Basten	1988, 1989, 1992

Messi and Ronaldo together won 13 Ballon d’Or awards, one of them taking the prize in every year from 2008 to 2017. Platini, Cruyff and van Basten share the pre-Messi record of three, and each won at least twice in a row.

What the Ballon d’Or is and how it works

The award began in 1956 as France Football’s prize for the best European player, decided by a vote of journalists from across the continent. Over the decades the eligibility widened: first to any player at a European club, then to the whole world, which is why later winners include South Americans and Africans who never appeared on the early lists. For a stretch from 2010 to 2015 it was merged with FIFA’s World Player award and known as the FIFA Ballon d’Or, before France Football reclaimed it on its own.

Voting rewards a full calendar year of performance across club and country rather than a single tournament, which is why players from Champions League and World Cup winners tend to dominate the shortlist. A women’s Ballon d’Or was introduced in 2018.

The winners who defined each era

The early lists read like a history of European football: Alfredo Di Stefano and Real Madrid, Eusebio and Benfica, Bobby Charlton and Manchester United after the Munich rebuild. The 1970s belonged to Johan Cruyff and Franz Beckenbauer, who between them won five. Platini’s hat-trick in the mid-1980s and van Basten’s Milan brilliance carried the award into the 1990s, when Brazilian flair — Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka — took over.

Then came the two-man era. From 2008 the prize belonged almost entirely to Messi and Ronaldo, broken only by Luka Modric in 2018, Karim Benzema in 2022 and Rodri in 2024. Rodri’s win was notable for a different reason: he is a holding midfielder, a role the award has rarely honored, and he took it after a season that ended with a European Championship for Spain.

Want to see how the game’s biggest names stack up on the pitch as well as the podium? Our leaderboards for most Champions League goals and most goals in football history show where Messi, Ronaldo and the rest rank on the numbers that decide these votes. Eight is the mark to beat, and right now no active player is close.