The Ballon d'Or president admits: Mbappé was the winner, and we recorded the smallest margin in the award's history
Kane snatched the award at the last second
The editor-in-chief of "France Football" has made a historic admission that changes how we see this year's award. The 2026 Ballon d'Or, he revealed, came down to the narrowest margin in the prize's history. Kylian Mbappé held the crown until the final metres, when Harry Kane turned everything on its head.
England's Harry Kane walked away with the Ballon d'Or as the best player of the season after a stunning campaign. He led Bayern Munich to the Bundesliga title and shone in both the World Cup and the Champions League. The fight for the prize was fiercer than anything it had seen before, with Mbappé and Lamine Yamal snapping at his heels.
The 41-point margin shattered
Vincent Garcia, editor-in-chief of France Football magazine and chief executive of the award, revealed that what happened this year had never happened before, saying: "The competition between Kane and Mbappé was extremely intense and nerve-wracking. The gap between them was even smaller than the gap between Rodri and Vinícius in 2024, which was 41 points and was considered very small at the time."
Then came the biggest surprise. In statements reported by Spain's "AS", Garcia said: "Mbappé led for a very long time during the voting process. He was out in front for weeks, but Kane settled the matter in the end. Mbappé delivered an exceptional season by every measure, and the competition for first place this year was the fiercest ever between Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappé."
Why did the world champions fall?
Garcia went on to unpick the mystery of Spain's collapse. The World Cup winners didn't simply suffer bad luck, he stressed. Their fall was the inevitable result of how they won.
"I believe that in the Spanish national team that won the World Cup, there was a clear scattering of votes between Rodri and Lamine Yamal," he said. "I think Rodri picked up votes that would have gone to Lamine in these elections."
"There was disparity and scattering among the national team's players," he added, "and more importantly, Spain stood out as a complete unit, as a single bloc. For this reason it was impossible to choose a single individual performance at the expense of the rest. Their victory was collective first and foremost and not an individual brilliance."
Paris Saint-Germain: the lost champion
Garcia then turned his fire on Paris Saint-Germain. For all their Champions League glory, he argued, the French club blew a historic chance through poor planning for the Ballon d'Or campaign.
"Unlike Real Madrid, who backed Mbappé strongly, the campaigns of other teams were very weak in the Ballon d'Or race, such as Paris Saint-Germain," he explained. "I think they should have backed Ousmane Dembélé as the sole candidate."
He added: "These players are the champions of Europe, and yet Kvaratskhelia came sixth, Dembélé seventh, and Fabián Ruiz tenth. I think Paris Saint-Germain's communication was not entirely clear. At first they tried to promote three players, then two. They should have backed only one candidate, and it should have been Ousmane Dembélé."
