By Samuel Akpan
Kylian Mbappe on Tuesday pressed his Ballon d’Or claim with fresh force, telling listeners he already feels the award is his after a year of personal scoring records.
The 27-year-old Real Madrid and France forward finished as top scorer at the summer World Cup, in last season’s Champions League and in La Liga.
Team silverware never arrived. France exited the World Cup in the semi-finals.
Real Madrid finished second in La Liga and were eliminated by Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-finals.
Speaking on RFI radio, the former Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain striker said the prize names a player, not a side.
“They won’t announce a team in the envelope, they will announce a player.”
Individual impact and spectacular moments, he argued, are what voters remember.
“The ability to perform individually and produce eye-catching moments, that’s what stands out to people for an award like this.”
He added: “I was top scorer in all the biggest competitions and I think that this could be a good year for me, and I really feel it.”
Mbappe scored 25 La Liga goals last season, 15 in the Champions League and 10 at the World Cup.
Those World Cup strikes took his career total in the tournament to 22, a new all-time record.
Rivals who collected trophies in 2026 still stand in his path.
Barcelona’s Lamine Yamal and Ferran Torres won La Liga and the World Cup.
Paris Saint-Germain pair Ousmane Dembele and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia lifted Ligue 1 and the Champions League, while Harry Kane was Bundesliga champion with Bayern Munich.
The Ballon d’Or ceremony will be held in London on 26 October.
PerSecondNews reports that the Ballon d’Or is not a trophy race and it is not a stats race.
France Football ranks three criteria in a fixed order, then 100 journalists convert that judgement into a points table.
The three official criteria, in order for 2026 the rules are explicit: voters must apply these three tests in this order.
1. Individual performances, decisive and impressive character;
This is the first and heaviest test. Voters are asked who changed matches, not who merely posted volume. Goals and assists matter, but so do match-winning influence, big-game presence, technical quality and the ability to produce memorable moments.
A player can lead the scoring charts and still lose if those goals look less decisive than a rival’s.
2. Collective performances and titles won;
Team success is second, not first. League titles, the Champions League, domestic cups and the World Cup all strengthen a case. They do not settle it. France Football has restated that a World Cup or Champions League win does not automatically confer the award.
Historically only a handful of winners finished a judging period without a team trophy, so silverware still helps a lot in practice, even if the rulebook puts it below individual impact.
3. Class and fair play
This is the lowest-weighted criterion: conduct on and off the pitch, discipline, respect and the absence of scandal. It rarely decides a clear race. It can tilt a close one.
Career résumé is not a criterion. That was dropped after the 2021 controversy, when Lionel Messi’s body of work was judged to have outweighed Robert Lewandowski’s season. Voters are supposed to judge only the reference window.
Who votes and how the points work;
A 30-player shortlist is drawn up by France Football and L’Équipe, with input from at least one previous juror and UEFA ambassadors (Luis Figo and Fabio Capello for the men’s prize).
Then one specialist journalist from each of the top 100 FIFA-ranked nations ranks 10 of those 30 names. The FIFA ranking used is the one in force when the lists were published on 8 September 2026. Players, coaches and fans do not vote.
What the rules mean in a year like this;
The official order explains why Mbappé can campaign on individual output. His argument — that the envelope contains a player, not a team — matches criterion 1.
Top scorer in La Liga, the Champions League and the World Cup, plus the World Cup all-time scoring record, is exactly the kind of evidence the first test asks for.
The same rules explain why that may not be enough. Lamine Yamal and Ferran Torres have the World Cup and La Liga. Ousmane Dembélé and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia have Ligue 1 and the Champions League.
Harry Kane has the Bundesliga. Under criterion 2, those titles are legitimate second-order evidence. Voters who treat “best player on the best team” as the default will lean that way even though the rulebook says not to treat trophies as automatic.
Fair play is unlikely to separate this field unless a candidate has a disciplinary stain the others lack.
The practical tension is this: the written hierarchy favours the most decisive individual; the culture of the vote still rewards winners of the World Cup and Champions League.
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