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Ballon d'Or

Best Ballon d'or winners

The community has spoken. Discover the world ranking, compare it to yours and see how everyone else voted.

Play this TopList

25contenders high-voltage

7.6kvotes

195TopList

0commentsUpdated on 09/26/2026 at 05:00 PM

Cristiano Ronaldo1618

The worldwide ranking generated by 7.6k votes

25 / 25

Cristiano Ronaldo1618

Lionel Messi1528

Zinedine Zidane1458

Ronaldinho1409

Ronaldo R91391

Michel Platini1329

Kaká1300

Rivaldo1265

Luka Modrić1254

#10

Luís Figo1229

#11

Marco van Basten1229

#12

Pavel Nedvěd1225

#13

Andriy Shevchenko1202

#14

Michael Owen1193

#15

Ruud Gullit1161

#16

George Weah1145

#17

Jean-Pierre Papin1131

#18

Fabio Cannavaro1119

#19

Roberto Baggio1088

#20

Lothar Matthäus1076

#21

Hristo Stoichkov986

#22

Matthias Sammer970

#23

Paolo Rossi937

#24

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge903

#25

Igor Belanov855

What the community says

Cristiano Ronaldo leads with an ELO of 1,618, ahead of Lionel Messi (1,528) and Zinedine Zidane (1,458). Ranked over 7,553 duels between 25 contenders, last updated September 26, 2026.

Rank the best Ballon d'Or winner since 1980!

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.