For most of the summer, the 2026 Ballon d’Or looked like a conversation between Harry Kane, Lamine Yamal and Kylian Mbappé. Michael Olise has muscled into it anyway.
The 24-year-old Bayern Munich winger is one of 30 names on the men’s shortlist for the award, announced ahead of the ceremony at the London Palladium on 26 October, the first time in its 70-year history the prize is being handed out outside France.
Thomas Müller, asked recently to pick his top two for the award, named Olise and Mbappé rather than the obvious frontrunners.
Seven assists, and a 56-year-old record
Olise’s case starts at the World Cup in North America. Playing alongside Mbappé and Ousmane Dembélé in France’s forward line, he ended the tournament with seven assists in eight appearances, a single-tournament record that pushed Pelé out of the book.
Pelé had held the mark since Mexico 1970, when he set up six goals in six games for Brazil. Olise’s record-breaker came in the bronze final against England on 18 July 2026, where his passes for Mbappé’s ninth and tenth goals of the tournament took him past Pelé. France lost that match 6-4 but Olise walked out of the tournament with the headline individual numbers in the entire competition.
A Bundesliga MVP, and a Sagnol endorsement
The club season behind the record was no lighter. Olise finished 2025-26 with 15 goals and 19 assists for Bayern, won the Bundesliga Player of the Season award ahead of team-mate Kane, and shared the top assist count in the Champions League with eight.
Bayern won the Bundesliga title and the DFB Cup. His standout afternoon was a 6-2 comeback win over Freiburg in which he had a direct hand in five of the six goals, with two of his own and three assists.
Willy Sagnol, the former Bayern and France defender, has set out the maximalist version of the case for him.
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“Olise is the best in the world, far ahead of all other players. If he doesn’t win the Ballon d’Or at the end of the year, something is seriously wrong,” Sagnol told Bundesliga.com.
Zinedine Zidane, who took over as France head coach on 1 September, has been more measured but no less complimentary during this international window.
“Olise, what he does is just exceptional,” Zidane said, as reported by French Football Weekly.
The crowded field in London
Bayern has four players on the 30-man list, Kane, Olise, Luis Díaz and Dayot Upamecano, more than any other club. Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona dominate the rest of the shortlist, with Yamal, Mbappé, Vinícius Júnior, Jude Bellingham and Dembélé among the names most frequently cited by voters.
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Kane, who scored 73 goals for club and country across the season, is the Bayern player who had been treated as their most likely winner before Olise’s World Cup. Olise and Díaz, in a joint interview before the vote, both said they were backing Kane for the award.
The winner is announced at the London Palladium on Monday 26 October.
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