France Football magazine, in cooperation with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), today announced the shortlist of nominees for the 2026 Ballon d\u2019Or awards, marking the final stage of voting ahead of the awards ceremony scheduled to take place in London on October 26.<\/p>\n
The shortlist features 30 nominees for the Men\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or and 30 for the Women\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or, alongside nominees for best male and female goalkeeper, best young player, best coach, and club of the year across both categories.<\/p>\n
The men\u2019s shortlist includes high-profile figures such as Spain\u2019s Lamine Yamal, France\u2019s Kylian Mbapp\u00e9, Spain\u2019s Rodri, France\u2019s Ousmane Demb\u00e9l\u00e9, Brazil\u2019s Vin\u00edcius J\u00fanior, Argentina\u2019s Lionel Messi, and Norway\u2019s Erling Haaland. Paris Saint-Germain emerged as the most-represented club among the Men\u2019s Player nominees.<\/p>\n
The announcement drew widespread attention following the absence of several prominent players, including Brazil\u2019s Raphinha, while Portugal\u2019s Cristiano Ronaldo was omitted for the fourth consecutive year. Lionel Messi returned to the candidate list after missing out on the previous two editions.<\/p>\n
Marking its 70th anniversary, the Ballon d\u2019Or ceremony is being hosted in London for the first time. The accolades are determined by an international panel of journalists representing the top 100 FIFA-ranked nations for the men\u2019s awards and top 50 for the women\u2019s awards, with voting based on individual performance, team contributions, and sportsmanship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
France Football magazine, in cooperation with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), today announced the shortlist of nominees for the 2026 Ballon d\u2019Or awards, marking the final stage of voting ahead of the awards ceremony scheduled to take place in London on October 26. The shortlist features 30 nominees for the Men\u2019s Ballon d\u2019Or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26431,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26427\/revisions\/26431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleasenetwork.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}