How the Ballon d'Or Is Decided
Who votes, what the criteria actually say, and why the award so often tracks the Champions League.
Written by the Scoresque editors. Last updated 2026-08-27.
The Ballon d'Or is football's most argued-about individual prize, and most of the arguing happens without anyone checking how the award actually works. Here is the process behind the golden ball, and why certain kinds of seasons keep winning it.
Who runs it and who votes
The award is organised by France Football, the French magazine that created it in 1956, in partnership with UEFA since 2024. The men's award is decided by one journalist per country from the top 100 nations in the FIFA rankings; the women's award uses the top 50. Each voter picks their top ten from a 30-player shortlist drawn up by the magazine's editors together with a panel of specialists.
Points are awarded on a sliding scale from first pick to tenth. The player with the most total points wins. If two players tie, the one with the most first-place votes takes it.
That structure matters: because a hundred journalists from very different football cultures each rank ten players, the award rewards seasons that were visible everywhere, which in practice means deep runs in the Champions League and major international tournaments.
What the criteria actually say
Since a 2022 overhaul, the official criteria are, in order of priority:
- Individual performances and decisive impact during the season being judged.
- Team achievements, meaning trophies won with club and country.
- Class and fair play.
Two older criteria were removed in that overhaul: career achievement no longer counts, and the award now covers a single football season, August to July, rather than a calendar year. That change was designed to stop the prize being a lifetime achievement award and to align it with how club football is actually played.
Why the Champions League looms so large
Look at the winners' list and a pattern jumps out: the winner almost always played a starring role in that season's Champions League. The reasons are structural rather than conspiratorial. The competition is the highest concentration of elite matches in the season, every voter watches it, and its knockout rounds create exactly the kind of decisive moments the first criterion asks voters to weigh. A player can dominate a domestic league and still lose the vote to someone who produced two unforgettable semi-final performances.
International tournaments have a similar effect in the years they are played. A World Cup or European Championship in June can swing a vote that had looked settled in March.
Common misconceptions
"FIFA runs it." Not since 2016. FIFA merged its own award with the Ballon d'Or between 2010 and 2015, then the two split. FIFA's award, The Best, is a separate prize with a different electorate that includes coaches, captains and fans.
"Statistics decide it." No formula is applied. Voters see the shortlist and rank players however they judge best. Goal and assist numbers influence voters, but nothing in the rules weights them.
"The favourite always wins." Upsets happen precisely because the electorate is so broad. A hundred journalists across a hundred countries do not move as one block, and split votes between teammates have decided several editions.
The other awards on the night
The same ceremony hands out the Kopa Trophy for the best player under 21, the Yashin Trophy for goalkeepers, the Gerd Muller Trophy for the season's top striker, and men's and women's Coach and Club of the Year awards. These use smaller specialist juries rather than the full journalist electorate.
Debates about who deserves it are a staple of our football coverage, and when viral claims about votes or snubs start circulating, our fact-check desk sorts the real story from the noise.