Top 10 Players With the Most Ballon d’Or Awards
Lionel Messi leads the players with the most Ballon d’Or awards with eight wins, followed by Cristiano Ronaldo with five. This ranking covers the men’s award through 2025, ordered by total wins, with equal totals sharing a position.
You’ll find every multiple winner below, including their winning years. Players tied on awards appear in the order they first won, rather than being separated by a judgement about who was better.
1. Lionel Messi – 8 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019, 2021 and 2023.
Messi’s record puts him three awards clear of Cristiano Ronaldo. His first four victories came in consecutive years, so half of his total arrived in one uninterrupted run from 2009 to 2012.
His eighth award came in 2023 after his first World Cup triumph with Argentina. And his record isn’t limited to victories: he also has 14 top-three finishes, including 11 in a row from 2007 to 2017.
2. Cristiano Ronaldo – 5 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 2008, 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2017.
Ronaldo’s first victory came before Messi’s first, while his remaining four arrived between 2013 and 2017. Together, they won every edition from 2008 through 2017, a ten-award stretch shared between just two players.
Ronaldo also holds the record for Ballon d’Or nominations, with 18. That’s a different measure from winning, but it adds context to his place near the top: his involvement in the award extended well beyond those five victories.
Joint 3rd. Johan Cruyff – Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1971, 1973 and 1974.
Cruyff was the first of these ten players to reach three wins. His victories came across four editions, with only the 1972 award interrupting the sequence.
He played for Barcelona from 1973 to 1978, meaning his final two awards fell within that spell. But the count doesn’t put him ahead of the other three-time winners: Cruyff, Michel Platini and Marco van Basten share third place.
Joint 3rd. Michel Platini – 3 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1983, 1984 and 1985.
Platini collected all three of his awards in consecutive years. Among the three-time winners, he’s the only one whose victories form an unbroken sequence.
That makes his record different from Cruyff’s and Van Basten’s, even though their totals are equal. If you’re comparing sustained winning runs rather than overall awards, Platini’s three straight victories deserve particular attention.
Joint 3rd. Marco van Basten – 3 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1988, 1989 and 1992.
Van Basten began with back-to-back victories, then returned to win a third award in 1992. His first two wins came during an extraordinary period for Milan: the club’s players occupied all three podium places in both 1988 and 1989.
So his early wins were part of something bigger than an individual run. Milan filled the entire top three in two successive editions.
Joint 6th. Alfredo Di Stéfano – 2 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1957 and 1959.
Di Stéfano’s victories came near the beginning of the award’s history. France Football introduced the Ballon d’Or in 1956, making his first win part of only its second edition.
He then won again two years later. Among the ten multiple winners in this ranking, nobody collected their first award earlier.
Joint 6th. Franz Beckenbauer – 2 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1972 and 1976.
Beckenbauer’s first victory came between Cruyff’s 1971 win and his consecutive successes in 1973 and 1974. His second followed four years after his first.
The 1972 edition also produced a national sweep: West German players took all three podium positions. That gives his first winning year another place in the award’s record book.
Joint 6th. Kevin Keegan – 2 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1978 and 1979.
Keegan won his two awards back to back. He shares sixth place overall, but his consecutive victories distinguish his winning pattern from Di Stéfano, Beckenbauer and Brazil’s Ronaldo.
For supporters familiar with his Liverpool connection, Keegan joined the club in 1971. Both Ballon d’Or wins came later in the decade.
Joint 6th. Karl-Heinz Rummenigge – 2 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1980 and 1981.
Rummenigge followed Keegan with another pair of consecutive victories. Between them, the two players accounted for all four awards from 1978 to 1981.
His second winning year also saw West German players fill the top three positions, repeating the country’s sweep from 1972.
Joint 6th. Ronaldo – 2 Ballon d’Or awards
Winning years: 1997 and 2002.
This is Brazil’s Ronaldo, not Cristiano Ronaldo. His two victories were five years apart, and his first made him the youngest winner, aged 21 years and 96 days.
He was also the first South American without European citizenship to win the award. That distinction matters because eligibility was narrower during the earlier decades.
Why the award’s history matters
The Ballon d’Or originally recognised only European players. In 1995, eligibility expanded to players of any origin at European clubs; in 2007, it became open to professional players worldwide.
For African fans, 1995 is especially significant: Liberia’s George Weah became the first non-European winner that year. His single victory leaves him outside this multiple-winners ranking, but its historical importance goes beyond the count.
The totals also include the FIFA Ballon d’Or years, when the award merged with FIFA’s World Player of the Year from 2010 to 2015. So if you’re settling an argument about who has won the most, Messi’s eight is the answer here, not a separate count that leaves out those merged editions.
Sources
Bernard Bassey
Bernard Bassey runs SPBO Scores from Abuja and writes about football rules, records and Nigerian football.
