Who wins the Ballon d'Or in a World Cup year
Seventeen World Cups have been played since the Ballon d’Or started in 1956. In six of those years the award went to a player from the team that had just won the tournament. The last was Fabio Cannavaro in 2006, and in the four World Cup years since, the winner has come from somewhere else.
2026 is the first year since 2018 in which the World Cup falls fully inside the period the Ballon d’Or jury votes on. Spain beat Argentina 1-0 in the final at MetLife Stadium, and their captain Rodri, who won the Ballon d’Or in 2024, was named player of the tournament. He is on the 30-man shortlist for the ceremony in London on 26 October, and so is Lionel Messi.
Every World Cup year since 1958
| YEAR | WORLD CUP | BALLON D’OR | HIS COUNTRY | AT THE WORLD CUP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1958 | Brazil | Raymond Kopa | France | Third |
| 1962 | Brazil | Josef Masopust | Czechoslovakia | Runner-up |
| 1966 | England | Bobby Charlton | England | Won |
| 1970 | Brazil | Gerd Müller | West Germany | Third |
| 1974 | West Germany | Johan Cruyff | Netherlands | Runner-up |
| 1978 | Argentina | Kevin Keegan | England | Did not qualify |
| 1982 | Italy | Paolo Rossi | Italy | Won |
| 1986 | Argentina | Igor Belanov | Soviet Union | Last 16 |
| 1990 | West Germany | Lothar Matthäus | West Germany | Won |
| 1994 | Brazil | Hristo Stoichkov | Bulgaria | Fourth |
| 1998 | France | Zinedine Zidane | France | Won |
| 2002 | Brazil | Ronaldo | Brazil | Won |
| 2006 | Italy | Fabio Cannavaro | Italy | Won |
| 2010 | Spain | Lionel Messi | Argentina | Quarter-finals |
| 2014 | Germany | Cristiano Ronaldo | Portugal | Group stage |
| 2018 | France | Luka Modrić | Croatia | Runner-up |
| 2022 | Argentina | Karim Benzema | France | Missed it injured |
The six who did both in the same year: Bobby Charlton in 1966, Paolo Rossi in 1982, Lothar Matthäus in 1990, Zinedine Zidane in 1998, Ronaldo in 2002 and Cannavaro in 2006.
Before 1995 the champions often could not win it
Until 1995 the Ballon d’Or was only open to European players. Six of the ten World Cups up to 1994 were won by Brazil or Argentina, so in those years nobody from the winning side was eligible. Pelé won three World Cups and never won the award while he was playing. Diego Maradona was the best player in Mexico in 1986, and the Ballon d’Or that year went to Igor Belanov of Dynamo Kyiv, who had scored a hat-trick for the Soviet Union in a 4-3 defeat to Belgium in the last 16.
The voters looked instead for the best European at the tournament. Raymond Kopa was the standout player for the France side that came third in 1958. Josef Masopust scored the opening goal of the 1962 final for Czechoslovakia before Brazil came back to win 3-1. Gerd Müller scored ten goals in Mexico in 1970. In 1994 Hristo Stoichkov shared the Golden Boot with Oleg Salenko and took Bulgaria to the semi-finals, while Romário, the best player at the tournament, could only win FIFA’s own player of the year award.
When a European team did win, the award followed it three times out of four. The exception was 1974, when West Germany beat the Netherlands in the final and Johan Cruyff still won the vote, with Franz Beckenbauer second.
Keegan in 1978
Kevin Keegan is the only Ballon d’Or winner in a World Cup year whose country did not play at the tournament. England finished behind Italy in their qualifying group and missed Argentina 1978. Keegan won it for a season with Hamburg, and won it again in 1979.
Three in a row, then none
From 1998 to 2006 the World Cup decided the award every time. Zidane headed two goals in the 1998 final. Ronaldo scored eight times in 2002, including both goals in the final. Cannavaro captained Italy in 2006 and became the last defender to win the award, a story told in more detail in every defender who has won the Ballon d’Or.
In 2010 FIFA merged its own award into the Ballon d’Or, and the jury grew to include national team coaches and captains as well as journalists. Spain won the World Cup that summer. Andrés Iniesta, who scored the winning goal in the final, finished second and his teammate Xavi third, behind Lionel Messi, whose Argentina had lost 4-0 to Germany in the quarter-finals. Wesley Sneijder, who had won the treble with Inter and reached the final with the Netherlands, was not among the three finalists.
In 2014 Germany won and Manuel Neuer came third, behind Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi. In 2018 France won, but Luka Modrić won the award after captaining Croatia to the final, with Antoine Griezmann third and Kylian Mbappé fourth.
The 2022 exception
From 2022 the award stopped covering a calendar year and started covering a season, August to July. The Qatar World Cup was played in November and December, after that year’s ceremony had already been held in October, so the 2022 Ballon d’Or went to Karim Benzema for his season at Real Madrid. Benzema then missed the World Cup through injury. Messi won the tournament with Argentina and received his eighth Ballon d’Or in October 2023, a year after the other World Cup winners on this list.
2026
The 2025-26 season ended with the World Cup in North America, so the tournament counts in full this time. Ferran Torres came off the bench and scored the only goal of the final in extra time, against an Argentina side down to ten men after Enzo Fernández was sent off. Rodri won the Golden Ball, with Messi second and Mbappé, who won the Golden Boot with ten goals, third.
Rodri and Messi are both on the shortlist, alongside Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé and Lamine Yamal. A Rodri win would make him the first player since Cannavaro to take the World Cup and the Ballon d’Or in the same year. A Messi win would be his ninth, and the first in a World Cup year for a player who lost the final since Modrić in 2018.
Test yourself on them
Charlton, Cruyff, Keegan, Rossi, Matthäus, Stoichkov, Zidane, Messi, Modrić, Benzema and Rodri are among the 895 players in Guess the Footballer, where each guess shows how close you are on nationality, league, club, position and age. For the clubs they played for, try Football Grid.