Champions League top scorers 2025/26: Haaland and Mbappe eye Golden Boot glory

Carlo Garganese

• Updated: 29 Jul 2025 16:43 CDT
• 10 min read

The race to be named Champions League top scorer for the 2025/26 season will see Europe’s best strikers do battle in a bid to claim the prestigious honour.

Raphinha and Serhou Guirassy shared last season’s award after scoring 13 times each for Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund respectively.

It was a Champions League Golden Boot race which saw multiple star players impress – there were eight forwards who ended up scoring eight goals or more in the tournament.

READ MORE: Premier League 2025/26 Top Scorers

That total of eight goals was all it had taken for Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe to share the Golden Boot in 2023/24, so Europe's top attackers made a significant improvement in last season's competition, even when factoring in the new format.

The 2024/25 event was the first time we saw an extended Champions League format, with more matches, more teams and more goals involved, and this year’s Golden Boot battle looks like it will be similarly entertaining and intriguing.

This race to score the most goals in the 2025/26 season is again likely to feature those recent UCL top scorer award winners Raphinha, Guirassy, Kane and Mbappe.

Kane and Mbappe are also recent winners of the European Golden Shoe, and will once again be eyeing prolific campaigns for Bayern and Real Madrid respectively.

READ MORE: European Golden Shoe 2025/26 Standings

Erling Haaland is a former Champions League top scorer and the Manchester City star will try again this this year in his bid to match competition greats Ruud van Nistelrooy, Eusebio, Ferenc Puskas and Jean-Pierre Papin in becoming a three-time UCL Golden Boot winner.

He has topped the goalscoring charts in Europe’s top club competition twice before, once for Dortmund and then for current club Man City as part of their famous treble season in 2022/23.

Mbappe’s team-mate Vinicius Junior also often appears prominently towards the top of the European Cup scoring standings and the Brazil star will be eager to impress once more in a key year ahead of the World Cup.

READ MORE: Manchester United 2025/26 Top Scorers

Vinicius was in that leading eight-man group of UCL forwards last season, which also featured Lautaro Martinez and Ousmane Dembele.

Those two players ended up contesting the final for Paris Saint-Germain and Inter, with Demeble ultimately the man to get his hands on the trophy in what was a magnificent campaign for both him individually and the French champions overall.

Robert Lewandowski finished third in the scoring standings last season and he had racked up a stunning total of 105 career Champions League goals as of the start of 2025/26, a huge total which only puts him behind UCL greats Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi in the all-time list.

Mohamed Salah returned to the tournament with Liverpool last season after a year away. While he had a stunning campaign in the Premier League, the Egypt star did not quite hit the same heights in Europe, so look out for him making a mark on the continental scene this season.

Atletico Madrid forward Antoine Griezmann is yet to finish as the top Champions League scorer but he is another consistent contender who is often knocking on the door.

READ MORE: Premier League Assists Standings

Will we see the UCL scoring title shared for a third straight season, or can one of football’s top attacking talents claim individual glory?

Champions League top scorers 2025/26

This page will display the Champions League top scorers for the 2025/26 season, updated after each matchday.

For now, we are displaying last season’s scoring standings, which will be updated with the 2025/26 top scorer charts after matchday one of the new campaign.

Champions League top scorers 2024/25

Raphinha and Serhou Guirassy shared the Champions League Golden Boot award in 2024/25 after scoring 13 goals each.

It was the second year in a row that there had not been an individual winner in the continental top scorer standings.

READ MORE: Most Assists In Europe 2025/26

And yet again the two players who ended up finishing top of the goal rankings did not contest the final with their teams.

Raphinha and Barcelona were eliminated by Inter in the semi-finals, after the Catalan club had beaten Guirassy and Dortmund in the quarter-finals.

Another Barca player, Robert Lewandowski, finished in a share of third place with 11 goals alongside Bayern star Harry Kane in the 2024/25 UCL goal rankings.

Kane and Lewandowski had both led the standings early in the season but Guirassy found some inspired form midway through the tournament and ended up with 13 goals from just 14 appearances, 12 of which were starts.

He scored a hat-trick against Barca in Dortmund's dramatic 5-3 aggregate defeat, having also netted twice against Lewandowski and Raphinha's side in the league stage meeting between the two teams.

Guirassy also had a double against Celtic in a memorable 7-1 win, and had another double in the 3-1 victory over Shakhtar Donetsk, ensuring he claimed his first top scorer award.

Raphinha is also a first-time winner, having struck 13 times from 14 starts. One of his memorable moments came with a hat-trick as Barca thrashed Bayern 4-1 in the league stage, while has also had five goals across three meetings with Benfica. The Catalans played the Portuguese side once in the initial round and then again over two legs in a last-16 tie.

Lautaro Martinez was fifth with nine goals, but he suffered heartbreak in the final as Inter were crushed 5-0 by PSG, who had seen off Arsenal, Aston Villa and Liverpool in the previous rounds, with the likes of Ousmane Dembele (eight goals) in inspired form.

Champions League top scorers 2023/24

The top Champions League scorers in the 2023/24 season were Harry Kane and Kylian Mbappe, who shared the award with eight goals each.

Neither of the players who shared the Golden Boot made it to the Champions League final last season, with that battle instead contested between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund after Bayern and PSG fell in the semi-finals.

Kane scored eight times in 12 appearances for Bayern, adding continental goals to his stunning Bundesliga season which saw him win the European Golden Shoe.

The former Tottenham striker had four goals in the group stage, two in the last 16 against Lazio, one in the quarter-final matches against Arsenal and another in the semi-finals against Madrid, where Bayern were ultimately eliminated late in a dramatic tie.

Mbappe, meanwhile, had three goals in the groups for PSG, before netting three more times across two legs of the last-16 victory over Real Sociedad on his way to becoming his club's first player since George Weah (1994/95) to top the continental scoring standings.

He scored twice in the quarter-final victory over Barcelona, both goals coming in an impressive second-leg win, but then failed to find the net in either leg of the shock semi-final loss to Dortmund.

Vinicius Junior scored in the final for Real Madrid and he shared third place with Man City's Erling Haaland and Atletico Madrid's Antoine Griezmann, with that trio all registering six goals in the list of Champions League top scorers for 2023/24.

Champions League top scorers 2022/23

Erling Haaland topped the Champions League goalscoring rankings in 2022/23.

He netted 12 times for eventual winners Man City, though it was midfielder Rodri who scored the winner in the final against Inter.

Haaland also did not score in either leg of the 5-1 aggregate semi-final win over Real Madrid, but still comfortably claimed his second UCL top scorer title due to his stunning form before that stage.

The striker was helped by his fantastic five-goal performance in a 7-0 round-of-16 second leg win for Man City over RB Leipzig.

Haaland also netted in both legs of the UCL quarter-final win over Bayern.

Mohamed Salah came in second place, scoring eight times in eight matches, helped by netting a group-stage hat-trick against Rangers.

But he and Liverpool were not part of the competition in 2023/24, after they missed out on a Premier League top-four finish. The Reds will return this season.

Haaland also topped the UCL scoring charts for Borussia Dortmund in 2020/21, netting 10 times on that occasion.

Karim Benzema and Robert Lewandowski have also been recent winners of the award.

Prior to that, there was an astonishing era of dominance from Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.

One of those two players won the award from every year between 2007 and 2019. That run was only briefly disrupted by Neymar in 2014/15, and even then he was only able to share the honour with Ronaldo and Messi, with all three players striking 10 times that season.

Until the slightly underwhelming winning totals from Kane and Mbappe in 2023/24, the highest Champions League goalscorer had netted at least 10 times in the competition for 13 straight seasons.

Prior to Kane and Mbappe, Lionel Messi was the last player to win the award while only scoring in single figures, finishing as top scorer in the 2009/10 competition with eight goals.

Champions League all-time goal records

Cristiano Ronaldo is the all-time Champions League top goalscorer.

The Portugal star scored 140 times in 183 matches, playing in the competition for Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus.

Lionel Messi is in second place with 129 goals, while Robert Lewandowski is the highest active UCL player in the rankings. He is third and has now moved past a century of goals, with 105 to his name going into this season.

Ronaldo has scored the most goals in a single Champions League campaign, striking 17 times for Real Madrid in 2013/14. That included a goal in the 2014 Champions League final, as his side defeated city rivals Atletico Madrid in extra-time.

And Ronaldo has also become the Champions League top scorer on more occasions than anyone else.

Ronaldo is a seven-time UCL top scorer, putting him just ahead of great rival Lionel Messi, who topped the competition's scoring charts on six occasions.

Real Madrid and Barcelona have traditionally dominated the top scorer rankings.

Madrid have had the golden boot winner 13 times dating back to the start of the European Cup, with Karim Benzema (2021/22) their most recent scoring champion, while Raphinha's success was the 10th time the UCL top scorer had represented Barca.

Bayern are close behind Barca with eight, while Man Utd have had the UCL top scorer seven times and Benfica have had six Golden Boot winners.