Ousmane Dembélé did not spend his France Football interview building a case for himself. Asked to name his three picks for the award he is currently defending, the Paris Saint-Germain forward went with Khvicha Kvaratskhelia first, then Harry Kane, then Kylian Mbappé.
That left the two names most of European football has been arguing about since July out in the cold: Lamine Yamal, who lifted the World Cup with Spain, and Rodri, who was named the tournament’s best player.
“My top 3? All mixed up: Kvara, Harry Kane, who had a very, very good season, and I think Kylian Mbappe,” Dembélé told France Football, in comments carried by Goal.
His reasoning was blunt: he sees this Ballon d’Or staying in Paris.
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“I don’t think the Ballon d’Or is undecided. It will remain in the hands of a PSG player,” he added, according to French Football Weekly.
Spain’s World Cup pair pointedly left off
Yamal and Rodri walk into the 2026 conversation on the back of Spain’s second world title, sealed by Ferran Torres’s extra-time winner in a 1-0 defeat of Argentina at MetLife Stadium on 19 July.
Rodri collected the Golden Ball as the tournament’s outstanding player, capping a run in which he covered more ground and had more involvements than any other footballer in the competition. Yamal, hampered by injury and reduced to a single goal in the finals, still added a winner’s medal to his Barcelona season.
Kvaratskhelia’s case sits on different ground. The Georgia winger was central to a PSG side that retained the Champions League, an argument Dembélé leaned into by pointing his vote at his own dressing room.
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The man doing the voting is also on the ballot
The obvious twist is that Dembélé is himself one of the players he is judging. He won the 2025 Ballon d’Or after a treble-winning campaign with PSG, then produced six goals at the World Cup, including a first-half hat-trick in a 4-1 win over Norway that made him the first player to score three inside 45 minutes at a men’s World Cup since Oleg Salenko in 1994.
France reached the semi-finals before losing 2-0 to Spain and then went down 6-4 to England in a wild third-place playoff.
Bookmakers have taken note. Kane, on a Bayern Munich season that yielded a record 73 goals across club and country, is the odds-on favourite at 4/6 with Squawka, while Dembélé has drifted from a 20/1 outsider a few weeks ago to 9/2 second favourite after his run in Europe. Yamal and Rodri sit further back on the same list.
First Ballon d’Or held in the UK
France Football hands out the 70th Ballon d’Or at the London Palladium on Monday, 26 October, the first time the ceremony has been held in the UK, with a jury of 100 journalists deciding the winner from the 30-name shortlist announced on 8 September.
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