Who Will Win the Premier League Golden Boot? Haaland and Thiago in Tense Battle for Goalscoring Supremacy

With just six weeks of the Premier League season to go, the race for the Golden Boot looks like it could go right down to the wire.

Having won the award in 2022/23 and 2023/24, Manchester City’s Erling Haaland is the Premier League’s top scorer as it stands, but Brentford’s Igor Thiago – in the form of his life right now – is hot on the Norwegian’s heels.

So, who will get their hands on the 2025/26 Premier League Golden Boot? Let’s take a look at what the numbers say…

Who Will Win the Premier League Golden Boot?

After Matchweek 34 of the 2025/26 Premier League campaign, Haaland leads the Golden Boot standings with 22 goals to Thiago’s 21.

Haaland failed to score for the fourth straight league game as Man City beat Chelsea 3-0 on Sunday to close the gap on leaders Arsenal to six points, but Thiago bagged both of Brentford’s goals in their 2-2 draw with Everton on Saturday – a productive return to action having made his Brazil debut during the international break, when he scored a penalty in his country’s 3-1 victory over Croatia.

Thiago is enjoying a purple patch, having found the net 10 times in 14 Premier League games this calendar year; Haaland, by contrast, has managed only three goals in 12 top-flight outings in 2026 – a major drought by his prolific standards.

Nonetheless, over the course of the season, Haaland averages a Premier League high 0.82 goals per 90 minutes – compared to Thiago’s 0.69; the 25-year-old also averages 0.79 expected goals (xG) per 90 to Thiago’s 0.62, pointing to the fact that he is so often in the right positions to get on the scoresheet.

And Haaland hasn’t suddenly lost his clinical nature in front of goal – as evidenced by his hat-trick in City’s recent 4-0 thrashing of Liverpool in the FA Cup quarter-finals.

That being said, Thiago has shown that he can rack up the goals in clusters too: the 24-year-old hit a hat-trick in Brentford’s 4-2 triumph at Everton in January and has six further braces to his name in all competitions this term – two fewer than Haaland.

In theory, then, there isn’t a massive amount to separate the Premier League’s two standout strikers of the moment – so could the key be in City and Brentford’s remaining seven and six fixtures respectively?

On paper, Brentford appear to have the slightly tougher run-in: the seventh-placed Bees face three of the top six as they push for an historic first-ever European qualification, including City away on May 9.

City, who are firmly in the hunt for a ninth Premier League title in 15 years, host Arsenal this Sunday but play only one other current top-six side: Aston Villa at home on the final day.

But there’s little to suggest that either Haaland or Thiago will find goals harder to come by than the other between now and the end of the season, so don’t be surprised to see the Golden Boot Race decided on Matchweek 38.

Which Other Players Are in the Premier League Golden Boot Race?

The next-highest Premier League scorer behind Haaland and Thiago is Haaland’s City teammate Antoine Semenyo on 15 goals – of which 10 came for Bournemouth before his January switch to the Etihad Stadium.

It’s not entirely out of the question that Semenyo could claw himself into contention – one hat-trick could do it – but one would imagine it’s unlikely with so little of the season left to go.

Eight more players have notched 10 or more Premier League goals this term: Joao Pedro (14), Danny Welbeck, Viktor Gyokeres (both 12), Hugo Ekitike (11), Harry Wilson, Junior Kroupi, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Jean-Philippe Mateta (all 10).

Could the Premier League Golden Boot Be Shared?

Yes, the Golden Boot could be shared – as has happened on five previous occasions in Premier League history.

The award was shared most recently in 2021/22, between Mo Salah and Son Heung-min – who both scored 23 goals, marking the highest total for joint Golden Boot winners.

The other instances of joint Golden Boot recipients came in 1997/98 (Chris Sutton, Dion Dublin and Michael Owen); 1998/99 (Owen, Dwight Yorke and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink); 2010/11 (Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov); and 2018/19 (Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Sadio Mane and Salah).

How Could Thiago Make History by Winning the Golden Boot?

If Thiago were to win the Golden Boot, he would become the first Brazilian to claim the prize – having already gone well past the previous highest goals tally by a Brazilian in a Premier League season.

In all, players of 14 different nationalities have picked up the Premier League Golden Boot, with Yorke (Trinidad and Tobago) and Hasselbaink (Netherlands) the first non-English recipients in 1998/99.

No Brazilian has finished as leading goalscorer in any of Europe’s top five leagues since 2011/12, when PSG’s Nene joint top-scored in Ligue 1 with Olivier Giroud.