Most Goals in a Champions League Season

Cristiano Ronaldo scored 17 goals in the 2013-14 Champions League, the most any player has managed in a single season of the competition. It came in the season Real Madrid won La Decima, their tenth European Cup, and Ronaldo capped it by scoring in the final. More than a decade on, no one has reached 17 in one campaign again.

What makes the record striking is how far clear Ronaldo sits. He does not just hold the top spot; he owns the top three single-season tallies outright. This is a single-season record, so keep it separate from the all-time career list, though Ronaldo leads that too. Here is the full table and why totals this high are so rare.

Most goals in a single Champions League season

The table ranks the highest single-season goal tallies in the Champions League group stage onward.

Rank	Player	Season	Goals
1	Cristiano Ronaldo	2013-14	17
2	Cristiano Ronaldo	2015-16	16
3	Cristiano Ronaldo	2017-18	15
3	Robert Lewandowski	2019-20	15
5	Ruud van Nistelrooy	2002-03	14
5	Lionel Messi	2011-12	14

Ronaldo occupies the first three places, which is the real headline. The gap between his 17 and the field is small in raw numbers but large in company: only a handful of players in history have even reached 14 in a season, and Ronaldo cleared 15 three separate times.

Ronaldo’s 2013-14 and the La Decima run

Ronaldo’s record season was built on a deep run and ruthless finishing. He scored in the group stage, through the knockouts, and again in the final against Atletico Madrid, which Madrid won in extra time. The 17 was not padded against weak opposition; it carried the team to the trophy it had chased for a decade.

The reason it has held up is the same reason it was so hard to set. A player needs his team to reach the final to have enough games, then needs to score in almost all of them. Ronaldo did exactly that, and doing it while winning the title is what makes the season the gold standard.

Lewandowski and the challengers

Robert Lewandowski’s 15 in 2019-20 is the best single-season total by a player other than Ronaldo, scored on Bayern Munich’s treble-winning campaign in which they won every match on the way to the trophy. It is the closest a non-Ronaldo season has come, and it needed a perfect team run to get there.

Since then, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe have produced prolific campaigns of their own, and either could threaten the record in a season where their team goes all the way. For now, though, the 17 remains untouched, and the list below it is thin.

Single season versus career

It is easy to conflate the two records, so keep them apart. The 17 is one season’s work. Over a whole career, Ronaldo scored roughly 140 Champions League goals, a separate record covered on our page for the most Champions League goals of all time. Same player, different scale.

Goals are only one measure of European greatness, of course. For the teams that lifted the trophy most often, our ranking of the most Champions League titles tells the club side of the story, where Real Madrid stand alone.

The short version: Cristiano Ronaldo’s 17 goals in 2013-14 is the Champions League single-season record, and with 16 and 15 in other years he holds the top three, a level of scoring dominance no one else has approached.