Ballon d'Or Winners: Full List From 1956 to 2025

Ousmane Dembélé won the men’s Ballon d’Or in 2025, making him the latest name on a list that began with Stanley Matthews in 1956. Lionel Messi remains the record holder with eight awards, three more than Cristiano Ronaldo.

The Ballon d’Or is presented by France Football. The men’s and women’s awards are separate; the chronological table on this page covers the men’s prize. It is complete through the 2025 ceremony and leaves 2020 marked as not awarded rather than quietly skipping the cancelled edition.

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 2025. The 2020 award was cancelled because of the pandemic.

Who won the 2025 Ballon d’Or?

Ousmane Dembélé won the men’s award in 2025. On the women’s side, Aitana Bonmatí won for the third year in a row. Keeping those prizes distinct prevents a common list problem: presenting the men’s table as if it were the only Ballon d’Or awarded at the ceremony.

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.

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.

Our history of the Ballon d’Or explains those eligibility changes and the FIFA merger in more detail.

The assessment period has been season-based since the 2022 award rather than covering a January-to-December calendar year. Results still reflect performances for club and country, but the stated period matters when comparing a summer tournament with the following club season. 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 through 2017 the prize went only to Messi or Ronaldo. Luka Modrić broke that run in 2018; Karim Benzema, Rodri and Dembélé are among the later winners who widened the field again. Rodri’s 2024 win was especially unusual for a holding midfielder, a role the award has rarely favored.

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.