The bookmakers have already picked a winner for the 2026 Ballon d’Or. Harry Kane is priced as the runaway favourite, with Lamine Yamal in second and Kylian Mbappé third.

Real Madrid, according to L’Équipe, are not treating those odds as settled. Spanish outlet Madrid Universal, citing the French daily, reports the club intends to mobilise “historic Madrid figures” to publicly argue Mbappé’s case in the weeks before the vote is locked in.

The 2013 blueprint

The reference point is Cristiano Ronaldo’s Ballon d’Or in 2013, the year Ribéry had won the Champions League with Bayern Munich and looked the natural pick. In the run-up to that vote, Alfredo Di Stéfano, Emilio Butragueño, Carlo Ancelotti, Iker Casillas and Sergio Ramos all publicly backed the Portuguese. He beat Ribéry on 27.99 percent of the vote to 23.36, with Lionel Messi wedged in between on 24.72.

The push this time follows a very public split with the award. Madrid boycotted the 2024 ceremony in protest at Vinícius Júnior’s exclusion. This time the club has swung the other way and placed the ceremony back at the centre of its calendar.

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Kane’s case is loud

The trouble for the campaign is that Kane’s season is difficult to talk down. The England captain scored 61 goals in 51 appearances for Bayern in all competitions, retained the Bundesliga title, and lifted the DFB Cup, the club’s first in six years.

He also took a third consecutive Bundesliga top-scorer award and a second European Golden Shoe, finishing nine goals ahead of Erling Haaland.

Mbappé’s case is not thin either. He won the Golden Boot at the 2026 World Cup and dragged France to the semi-finals, but Real Madrid went out of the Champions League at the quarter-final stage against Bayern and finished the club season without a major trophy. Voters have historically weighed silverware heavily.

That is the gap the legends campaign is designed to close: not by rewriting Mbappé’s season, but by keeping his name loud enough in the conversation to swing the marginal ballots.

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26 October at the London Palladium

The 30-man men’s shortlist was confirmed on 8 September, with Mbappé, Kane, Yamal, Rodri, Messi and current holder Ousmane Dembélé all included. The winner will be announced at the London Palladium on Monday, 26 October, at 8pm local time, the first Ballon d’Or ceremony ever held outside Paris.

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