Kane won the Ballon d'Or. BBC viewers put such stars first or outside the top four.
Harry Kane won the Ballon d'Or, football's top prize for one player, on 26 October. In December BBC viewers choose Britain's sports star of the year.
What happened
Harry Kane won the men’s Ballon d’Or at the Palladium in London, the first Englishman to win football’s most prestigious individual trophy in 25 years.
Harry Kane won the Ballon d’Or on . It is football’s top prize for a single player, chosen by a vote of journalists and football officials. He is the first Englishman to win it in 25 years. Kane, 33, is the England captain and plays for Bayern Munich in Germany. Since he has scored 89 goals for club and country, and he led England to a World Cup semi-final.
Kane took the prize at the Palladium theatre in London and said “Being here in London has made it extra special“. The Football Association lit the arch of Wembley Stadium gold that night. On a spokesperson for Prime Minister Andy Burnham said “the whole nation will be incredibly proud of him“.
England forward Chloe Kelly, Lionesses goalkeeper Hannah Hampton and darts player Luke Littler were also shortlisted for the award by a panel of experts, with the winner decided by a public vote.
BBC Sport, 18 December 2025
Twelve sport experts pick the final list for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, and in 2025 they named six people. Viewers then choose the winner in a vote during the live TV show, so a star left off the list cannot win. Golfer Rory McIlroy won on . The BBC has not yet named the date of the 2026 show.
Two runners stand in Kane’s way. In August Amy Hunt became the first person in the 96-year history of the European Athletics Championships to win four gold medals, at home in Birmingham. Josh Kerr broke a world mile record that had stood for 27 years. In September bookmakers put Kane third, behind Hunt and Kerr. Since 2017 the BBC has put two people from one sport on its list only twice, and in 2023 Kerr, then world 1500m champion, was left off.
Sources: theguardian.com
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a British sports star won the top world prize of their sport and stood in the BBC vote of the same year. We counted from 2006, when a panel began to pick the final list, and used six world prizes, from football’s Ballon d’Or to cycling’s Vélo d’Or. We found four such years, from 2012 to 2017. Chris Froome, a cyclist, stood in two of them.
Show the other 2 cases
The Read
Two of the four stars won, and both won clearly. Andy Murray had about twice as many votes as the runner-up in 2016, and Bradley Wiggins led by more than seven percentage points in 2012. Neither of the other two came second or third. Chris Froome was sixth in 2013, the year Murray became the first British man in 77 years to win Wimbledon. In 2017, days before the show, it came out that a test had found twice the allowed level of an asthma drug in Froome’s body. He said he broke no rules. Wiggins took his trophy on stage, while Murray joined by video link from Florida.
There are reasons for doubt. All four stars came from cycling or tennis, and Froome stood in two of the four years. Before Kane, the last English winner of the Ballon d’Or was Michael Owen in 2001, so no footballer is among the four. England footballers Beth Mead and Mary Earps did win the vote in 2022 and 2023. In 2018 the BBC cut the final list to six names, against 10 to 16 in the four earlier years, and that year Kane came third as top scorer at the World Cup.
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