Ballon d'Or, behind the scenes of Kane's victory: the points difference with Mbappé was decided in the final votes

Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal are the big losers of the 2026 Ballon d'Or, deservedly won by Harry Kane, who had an extraordinary season. In particular, the Frenchman was narrowly defeated, to put it in a horse racing term, by the powerful comeback of the English striker. Vote after vote, point after point, Kane came out on top and arrived first at the finish line of eternal football glory. The details were revealed by the editor-in-chief of France Football, the magazine that has organized the award for 70 years, who also announced the minimum difference between the two footballers at the end of the counting of the votes of the 100 journalists called to express their assessment.

How many points was the difference between Kane and Mbappé in the 2026 Ballon d'Or rankings?

"The race between Kane and Mbappé was extremely close," said Vincent Garcia at the conclusion of the ceremony in London. "The gap was even smaller than the one between Rodri and Vinicius in 2014, when it was 41 points, and even then the gap was very small. I followed the results of the vote in real time all month. Mbappé led for a long time, but Harry Kane came back. In the end, the winner was determined by a very, very small number of points."

So the difference was really minimal, although the scores of all 30 candidates will be announced on Saturday. However, this is not a record in the history of the Ballon d'Or, as there have been editions decided by just one point, considering that the voting systems at the time were different: in 1996, Matthias Sammer defeated Ronaldo Fenomeni with a score of 144 to 143, while the same difference was recorded in 1966 between the winner Bobby Charlton and Eusebio, with a score of 81 to 80.

Why didn't a Spanish or PSG player win?

Garcia then explained why Spain, the world champions, did not have a player lift the trophy in London: "I believe there was a split of votes between Rodri and Yamal, and that the former took points from Lamine in this vote. The votes were distributed in a way between the Spanish players and, above all, Spain stood out as a group. For this reason, it was difficult to identify a single performance that stood out above the others." Yamal came third, Rodri fourth, Fabián Ruiz tenth, Pau Cubarsí 12th, Ferran Torres 16th and Marc Cucurella 18th.

As for PSG, who won the award for best team of the year, the editor-in-chief of France Football said that the French club, despite their triumph in the Champions League, was not really in the running for the Ballon d'Or because none of their players had presented a strong enough individual candidacy. The Parisian club's media campaign had not helped this effort and was considered wrong: "Unlike Real Madrid with Mbappé, other clubs have run a disappointing campaign in the Ballon d'Or race, like PSG. I think they should have supported Ousmane Dembélé. These players are European champions, yet Kvaratskhelia came in sixth, Ousmane seventh and Fabián Ruiz tenth. I think PSG's communication was not entirely clear, initially trying to promote three players and then two. I think they should have supported only one candidate and that should have been Ousmane Dembélé."

In the end, Garcia refused to reveal his ballot. He asked to wait for the full count to be published: "I voted for someone who didn't win and I think he deserved the award too, but you'll see that on Saturday."