Kylian Mbappé was belatedly presented with the 2024–25 European Golden Shoe after finishing last season as the continent’s top league scorer. The Real Madrid forward netted 31 LaLiga goals to claim the trophy — joining club legends such as Hugo Sánchez and Cristiano Ronaldo on Real Madrid’s roll call of winners — and added his prize to a long list of historic recipients that includes Eusébio, Gerd Müller, Marco van Basten, Ronaldo, Thierry Henry, Lionel Messi, Luis Suárez, Robert Lewandowski and Harry Kane.
But the early pace for the 2025–26 European Golden Shoe is being set by a relative unknown. Darko Lemajic, a 32-year-old Serbian striker playing for Rigas Futbola Skola (RFS) in Latvia, tops the leaderboard after scoring 28 league goals in the Latvian Virsliga. Because the Virsliga runs a March–November schedule, Lemajic has already had 35 games this season to build his tally and still has one league fixture left.
How the Golden Shoe is calculated
Since 1997 the award has used a points system that weights goals according to the strength of the league, based on UEFA coefficients. Goals in the top five leagues are multiplied by 2, leagues ranked 6–22 by 1.5, and leagues below 2
