Did a controversial remark backfire on Kylian Mbappe? How narrow Harry Kane’s Ballon d’Or victory was

Harry Kane apparently edged out rival Kylian Mbappe by the narrowest of margins in the race for the 2026 Ballon d’Or.

The editor-in-chief of France Football, Vincent Garcia, revealed on the sidelines of Monday evening's awards ceremony that only a few votes separated the Bayern Munich striker from the Real Madrid forward.

"There were several serious contenders this year. The two closest rivals were the two frontrunners, Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe, and the contest between them was decided by a very narrow margin," Garcia explained.

The points gap was even smaller than in the previous closest result in 2024. Back then, Manchester City midfielder Rodri beat Real Madrid's Vinicius Junior by just 41 points. "The battle for first place was incredibly close between Kane and Mbappe this year," Garcia said.

Mbappe, the French 2018 World Cup winner, looked more likely to triumph at one stage before Kane overtook him in the final stretch. "I followed the results in real time during the month of voting. Kylian led for a long time, but Harry Kane came back into contention, and in the end it was decided by a very, very small number of points," Garcia added.

Garcia, the France Football editor-in-chief, would not reveal which player received his own vote: "You should find that out only when it is published, because I ask the jury members not to disclose their votes before the magazine comes out, so I won't do that either. I voted for someone who didn't win, and I think he would have deserved it too."

Ballon d'Or: Did Kylia Mbappe and Lamine Yamal shoot themselves out of contention?

Unlike Kane, who had kept quiet about his chances, Mbappe had, like eventual third-place finisher Lamine Yamal, repeatedly attracted attention in recent weeks for publicly singing his own praises.

Whether that cost Mbappe votes is hard to judge. Former Ballon d'Or chief Pascal Ferre, though, recently said he considered the aggressive self-promotion a serious mistake.

"The voters are not naive. They have both the experience and the judgement needed to assess and evaluate a player without having to hear ten or fifteen times that he is the best," he told the French newspaper Le Parisien.

Alongside his work organising the awards ceremony, Ferre was once also editor-in-chief of France Football, the French football magazine that awards the Ballon d'Or.