Ousmane Dembélé Wins 2025 Ballon d’Or in Paris

Paris remains the latest stop on the Ballon d’Or map, with France’s Ousmane Dembélé taking the 2025 award and joining a roll of honour that stretches back to Stanley Matthews in 1956. The prize has traced European club football through its defining generations, from the Real Madrid era of Alfredo Di Stéfano to the long rivalry between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Key takeaways

• Ousmane Dembélé was named Ballon d’Or winner for 2025.
• Rodri won the 2024 edition, becoming the most recent Spanish recipient.
• Lionel Messi has won the award eight times, more than any other player.
• Cristiano Ronaldo collected five Ballons d’Or between 2008 and 2017.
• No Ballon d’Or was awarded in 2020.

A prize shaped by football’s great eras

Dembélé succeeds Rodri, who won in 2024, while Messi’s 2023 success was his eighth. Before that, Karim Benzema was honoured in 2022, following another Messi victory in 2021. The cancelled 2020 edition remains the only gap in the modern sequence.

The recent record is dominated by Messi and Ronaldo. Messi claimed the trophy in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2015, then again in 2019, 2021 and 2023. Ronaldo’s five awards arrived in 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017. Their run interrupted and was interrupted by landmark winners including Kaká, Luka Modrić and Fabio Cannavaro.

Further back, three consecutive awards marked the peaks of Michel Platini, Marco van Basten and Johan Cruyff. Franz Beckenbauer, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Kevin Keegan each won twice, while the list also carries singular names from across the continent and beyond: George Weah, Hristo Stoichkov, Andriy Shevchenko, Pavel Nedvěd, Lev Yashin and George Best.

Ballon d’Or winners by year