Harry Kane Wins European Golden Shoe After 73-Goal Season
England captain Harry Kane has been named winner of the European Golden Shoe for the 2025/26 season, finishing as the continent’s leading league goalscorer after a phenomenal campaign that saw the Bayern Munich striker net 73 goals across all competitions for club and country.
Kane topped the European Golden Shoe standings after scoring 36 league goals for Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga, a tally that, factored under the award’s weighting system, gave him 72 points, comfortably ahead of Manchester City’s Erling Haaland on 54 points and Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappé on 50 points. The award, presented annually by European Sports Media (ESM) since 1997 and by UEFA before that from 1967/68, recognises the top scorer across Europe’s domestic leagues, with goals weighted according to the relative strength of each league.
Across all competitions for club and country, Kane finished the season with 73 goals in 65 appearances, also providing eight assists. That tally represents the second-highest single-season goal haul so far this century, behind only Lionel Messi’s 91 goals during his historic 2011/12 campaign with Barcelona. His finishing led Bayern Munich to a domestic double, winning both the Bundesliga title and the DFB Cup, where he scored a hat-trick in the final in Berlin to finish as the competition’s top scorer. He was also crowned Bundesliga top scorer for a third consecutive season and finished as the second-highest scorer in that season’s Champions League, while becoming the fastest player in history to reach 100 goals for a club across any of Europe’s top five leagues.
Kane’s international form proved equally decisive. Of his 73 goals, 12 came for England, matching his best return for the Three Lions since the 2021/22 season. He went on to enjoy a memorable 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign, helping England secure their best-ever finish at a men’s World Cup staged outside Europe. During the tournament, Kane became England’s all-time leading World Cup goalscorer after first equalling and then surpassing Gary Lineker’s long-standing record, while also climbing to fifth on the all-time FIFA World Cup scoring charts. He remains the only player besides Cristiano Ronaldo to have scored 20 or more goals across both the World Cup and the European Championship.
This marks the second time Kane has won the European Golden Shoe, having previously claimed the award during his debut Bundesliga season in 2023/24. The achievement places him among an elite group of multiple winners, with only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo having won the award more often. Within Bayern Munich’s own history, Kane joins two-time winners Gerd Müller and Robert Lewandowski as a multiple recipient of the honour. Bayern chairman Herbert Hainer praised Kane as a guiding light for his teams both on and off the pitch, citing his leadership and character. Kane is set to formally receive the award at a ceremony on August 19 at the FC Bayern Museum.
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