Ballon d'Or Winners List (1956 - 2025)

Ballon d'Or Winners: Ballon d'Or, or the Golden Ball, is one of the most prestigious awards in the football world. It has been presented annually by the French magazine France Football since 1956. Until 2006, the winner of the award was chosen by an elite panel of football journalists around the world.

Since its inception in 1956 till 1994, the award was meant exclusively for European players. In 1995, it was expanded to include footballers from all over the world who are playing for European Clubs.

Between the years 2010-15, this award was known as FIFA Ballon d'Or in collaboration with FIFA. However, the same ended in 2016, and was thereafter again known as Ballon d'Or only.

In this article, we will be looking at the list of Ballon d'Or winners from 1956 to 2025.

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List of Ballon d'Or Winners from 1956 to 2025

In 2022, France Football overhauled the Ballon d'Or regulations, implementing substantial alterations to its framework. The pivotal change resided in the temporal criterion, as the accolades shifted from being based on achievements within a conventional calendar year to being hinged on the performance throughout a football season.

A momentous decision was made to restrict the privilege of casting votes to only those nations residing within the upper echelons of the FIFA World Ranking, specifically, the top 100. A marked departure from the prior practice, where all nations had the opportunity to partake in the plebiscite, which had persisted since 2007.

The complete list of Ballon d'Or winners from 1956 to 2025 is as follows:

This transformative adjustment harmonised the Ballon d'Or with the prestigious UEFA Men's Player of the Year Award, a commendable endeavour to mitigate the dominance of exclusive leagues and, most notably, to usher in a more diversified representation, given the recent hegemony of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

Who has won the most Ballon d'Or titles?

Lionel Messi holds the record for winning the most Ballon d'Or titles. He won 8 times, of which six he won during his stint with FC Barcelona. Cristiano Ronaldo is second on the list with 5 Ballon d'Or titles. Dutch legend Johan Cruyff, French talisman Michelle Platini and another Dutch superstar, Marco Van Basten, are third in the all-time winners list with 3 Ballon d'Or trophies each.

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