Lamine Yamal lifted the World Cup with Spain in July and has sat near the top of every Ballon d’Or power ranking since. On Monday the French newspaper’s reader poll left the 19-year-old Barcelona winger off the podium entirely.
Kylian Mbappé drew 34.2% in the poll published on 12 October, clear of Paris Saint-Germain’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia on 24.3% and Bayern Munich striker Harry Kane on 8.6%.
Mbappé scored 42 for a trophy-less Madrid
Real Madrid finished 2025-26 without a major trophy, but Mbappé still ended the club campaign on 42 goals and then topped the scoring at the World Cup with ten, according to Sports Illustrated’s rundown of the race. That combination has kept the France forward in the conversation all year.
Kane sits third in the French poll, yet Sports Illustrated’s September rundown still had him as the overall betting favorite. His case is built on volume: 61 club goals in 2025-26 and six at the World Cup before England went out in the semi-finals.
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Marca’s parallel poll puts Yamal top
Kvaratskhelia’s second place is the real anomaly of the L’Équipe table. The Georgia winger, listed under Paris Saint-Germain on UEFA’s 30-man Ballon d’Or shortlist, ran up 19 goals and 11 assists last season, including ten in the Champions League.
Not every poll agrees. Spain’s Marca ran a parallel reader survey and had Yamal first and Mbappé second, as noted in a comparison of the two votes.
The split captures the argument that has run through the race for months: a teenager with a World Cup and back-to-back Liga titles with Barcelona against the raw scoring volumes of Mbappé and Kane. None of these polls bind the actual vote; the 100 journalists on France Football’s panel closed their ballots on 28 September and the result stays sealed until the ceremony.
The 70th edition of the Ballon d’Or is on Monday 26 October at the London Palladium, the first time the award has left France.
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