You may be able to win a game thanks to one standout individual performance, but it takes a full squad to win a championship trophy. Football is a team sport, and if everyone isn't pulling in the same direction it's very difficult to achieve success. For that reason, footballers and coaches are trained to concentrate on fostering teamwork and contributing to the wider collective rather than focusing too much on personal matters.
However, there is still a place for individual brilliance in football. Every season, players across the world are handed awards recognising their achievements, from top goal scorer trophies, to team of the year nominations, and PFA Player of the Year awards. The most prestigious of these individual awards is the Ballon d'Or.
In this article, we'll be explaining what the Ballon d'Or is and providing you with a brief history of the trophy before answering the question 'Who has the most Ballon d'Or wins in history?' and giving you a full rundown of every single winner of the award since its inception.
Every year, the Ballon d'Or hosts a celebration of the greatest footballing talent in the world. The event has been taking place annually ever since 1956, when two French journalists, Gabriel Hanot and Jacques Ferran, came up with concept as a way of recognising the achievements of top European footballers (originally, it was known as the European Footballer of the Year award).
For the vast majority of the award's history, the winner of the Ballon d'Or has been decided exclusively by journalists from across Europe, who each cast a vote to determine the champion. Originally, only players from Europe could take home the Ballon d'Or, but in 1995 the rules were changed to allow players from anywhere in the world to partake, as long as they were currently playing in Europe. This led to the triumph of Liberia's George Weah, the first non-European to win the trophy and the only African player to date.
The Ballon d'Or has faced some criticism over the years, with certain people within football not deeming it a fair test of quality or performance, more to do with popularity than quality and tending to favour attacking players over defenders. However, it remains the most prestigious and widely-regarded individual prize within soccer, and anyone who manages to win the award is among a very select group.
Each year, a jury of 100 journalists is selected to decide who wins the Ballon d'Or. The journalists are chosen based on FIFA's rankings, with one journalist from each of the world's top 100 ranked nations getting to cast a vote.
Each journalist will be presented with a shortlist of 30 players, and they will rank their top five players from first to fifth. The top player will get six points, the second player will get four, the third three, the fourth two and the fifth one. The competition organisers will then gather together all the journalists' votes, and the player who amasses the most points in total wins the award.
On the night, the players that finish second and third will also be announced, and they will get an opportunity to receive congratulations from attendees. After the big reveal, the full ranking will be released so that fans and voters can see how each player on the shortlist has done.
The Ballon d'Or awards ceremony is a glamorous black-tie event that takes place every year and is always guaranteed to be packed with professional football's most dazzling stars. Players, coaches, executives, and journalists from across the world gather together to watch the crowning of the year's greatest player, as judged by the football press.
The exact date of the Ballon D'Or awards ceremony changes from year to year, but typically it will take place towards the end of autumn. This is so that voters have the majority of the year to pick who they think deserves the win (although in 2022 the award rules were modified so that not only the achievements of a calendar year are to be taken into account, but the achievements of the entire football season). In 2023, the Ballon d'Or shortlist was announced on 6 September and the award winner was declared at the ceremony on 30 October.
This year, the 68th edition of the ceremony is set to take place on Monday 28th October, at Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. Currently, the favourites for the award include Jude Bellingham, Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane; the upcoming European Championships in Germany (kicking off on 14 June) is likely to have a significant bearing on how things play out. And given the amount of world-class South American players operating in Europe's Big Five leagues, Ballon d'Or organisers will also be sure to have a keen eye on Copa America 2024, also taking place in June and July.
Since the prestigious award was first introduced in 1956, a total of 45 different players have won the Ballon d'Or. Some stars may only get their hands on the trophy once — and that in itself is of course a momentous achievement — but the most talented and successful pros can end up winning multiple Ballon D'Or trophies throughout their careers.
In the next section of this article, you'll find out which players have been Ballon D'Or winners on more than one occasion, and who has the most wins in the history of the award.
A number of players from all over the globe have got their hands on this trophy over the years. The table below lists every single one of them.
Year |
Player |
Club |
Points/Vote Share |
1956 |
Stanley Matthews |
Blackpool |
47 |
1957 |
Alfredo Di Stefano |
Real Madrid |
72 |
1958 |
Raymond Kopa |
Real Madrid |
71 |
1959 |
Alfredo Di Stefano |
Real Madrid |
80 |
1960 |
Luis Suarez |
Barcelona |
54 |
1961 |
Omar Sivori |
Juventus |
46 |
1962 |
Josef Masopust |
Dukla Prague |
65 |
1963 |
Lev Yashin |
Dynamo Moscow |
73 |
1964 |
Denis Law |
Manchester United |
61 |
1965 |
Eusebio |
Benfica |
67 |
1966 |
Bobby Charlton |
Manchester United |
81 |
1967 |
Florian Albert |
Ferencvaros |
68 |
1968 |
George Best |
Manchester United |
61 |
1969 |
Gianni Rivera |
AC Milan |
83 |
1970 |
Gerd Muller |
Bayern Munich |
77 |
1971 |
Johan Cruyff |
Ajax |
116 |
1972 |
Franz Beckenbauer |
Bayern Munich |
81 |
1973 |
Johan Cruyff |
Barcelona |
96 |
1974 |
Johan Cruyff |
Barcelona |
116 |
1975 |
Oleg Blokhin |
Dynamo Kyiv |
122 |
1976 |
Franz Beckenbauer |
Bayern Munich |
91 |
1977 |
Allan Simonsen |
Borussia Monchengladbach |
74 |
1978 |
Kevin Keegan |
Hamburger SV |
87 |
1979 |
Kevin Keegan |
Hamburger SV |
118 |
1980 |
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge |
Bayern Munich |
122 |
1981 |
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge |
Bayern Munich |
106 |
1982 |
Paolo Rossi |
Juventus |
115 |
1983 |
Michel Platini |
Juventus |
110 |
1984 |
Michel Platini |
Juventus |
110 |
1985 |
Michel Platini |
Juventus |
127 |
1986 |
Igor Belanov |
Dynamo Kyiv |
84 |
1987 |
Ruud Hullit |
AC Milan |
106 |
1988 |
Marco van Basten |
AC Milan |
129 |
1989 |
Marco van Basten |
AC Milan |
129 |
1990 |
Lothar Matthaus |
Inter Milan |
137 |
1991 |
Jean-Pierre Papin |
Marseille |
141 |
1992 |
Marco van Basten |
AC Milan |
98 |
1993 |
Roberto Baggio |
Juventus |
142 |
1994 |
Hristo Stoichkov |
Barcelona |
210 |
1995 |
George Weah |
AC Milan |
144 |
1996 |
Matthias Sammer |
Borussia Dortmund |
144 |
1997 |
Ronaldo |
Inter Milan |
222 |
1998 |
Zinedine Zidane |
Juventus |
244 |
1999 |
Rivaldo |
Barcelona |
219 |
2000 |
Luis Figo |
Real Madrid |
197 |
2001 |
Michael Owen |
Liverpool |
176 |
2002 |
Ronaldo |
Real Madrid |
169 |
2003 |
Pavel Nedved |
Juventus |
190 |
2004 |
Andriy Shevchenko |
AC Milan |
175 |
2005 |
Ronaldinho |
Barcelona |
225 |
2006 |
Fabio Cannavaro |
Real Madrid |
173 |
2007 |
Kaka |
AC Milan |
444 |
2008 |
Cristiano Ronaldo |
Manchester United |
446 |
2009 |
Lionel Messi |
Barcelona |
473 |
2010 |
Lionel Messi |
Barcelona |
22.65% |
2011 |
Lionel Messi |
Barcelona |
47.88% |
2012 |
Lionel Messi |
Barcelona |
41.6% |
2013 |
Cristiano Ronaldo |
Real Madrid |
27.99% |
2014 |
Cristiano Ronaldo |
Real Madrid |
37.66% |
2015 |
Lionel Messi |
Barcelona |
41.33% |
2016 |
Cristiano Ronaldo |
Real Madrid |
745 |
2017 |
Cristiano Ronaldo |
Real Madrid |
946 |
2018 |
Luka Modric |
Real Madrid |
753 |
2019 |
Lionel Messi |
Barcelona |
686 |
2020 |
N/A (Covid-19) |
N/A (Covid-19) |
N/A (Covid-19) |
2021 |
Lionel Messi |
Paris Saint-Germain |
613 |
2022 |
Karim Benzema |
Real Madrid |
549 |
2023 |
Lionel Messi |
Inter Miami |
642 |
As you'll see in the table above, the Ballon D'Or award has been dominated by two heavyweights of world football over the past 15 years, with Argentine World Cup winner Lionel Messi and Portuguese Euros champion Cristiano Ronaldo winning 13 Ballon D'Ors out of 15 since 2008. Only Luka Modric and Karim Benzema have broken their stranglehold over the trophy.
However, of the two, Messi has been the most successful when it comes to Ballon d'Or. The Inter Miami star has won the award on a record eight occasions, making him the most decorated player in the history of the award by quite some distance. Meanwhile, Cristiano has won the award five times, the first in 2008 and the most recent in 2017. Three players have won the award three times: Michel Platini, Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten. It will certainly take a lot to beat Messi's record.
The Ballon d'Or isn't the only kind of trophy available to players when football awards season swings around. Named after the French 1958 Ballon d'Or winner Raymond Kopa, the Kopa Trophy is also handed out at the same ceremony to the best-performing player under the age of 21 (the most recent winner was Jude Bellingham). This award was established in 2018, and the following year another new trophy was introduced to address the fact that before 2019, only one goalkeeper had won the Ballon d'Or since the creation of the award.
In order to reward goalkeepers for their achievements in the game (which can be overlooked in comparison with outfield players), Ballon d'Or organisers France Football launched the Yashin Trophy in 2019, naming the goalkeeper accolade after the only shot-stopper to have ever won the Ballon d'Or: former Soviet Union and Dynamo Moscow legend Lev Yashin, who kept a remarkable 270 clean sheets in 400+ games for club and country.
Every year, the Yashin Trophy is given to the player judged to be the best goalkeeper in the world. If you'd like to find out more about this award and its place within the game, take a look at our deep dive on the Yashin Trophy.