Manchester City’s late push for this season’s Premier League championship fell just short, but even with the disappointing second-place finish, the team’s star striker has claimed a title of his own.
With an estimated $80 million in income over the past 12 months—counting both his playing contract with the Sky Blues and his endorsements, appearances and memorabilia—Erling Haaland is the world’s highest-paid athlete 25 or younger.
It’s just the latest accomplishment in a year full of them for the 25-year-old Norwegian, who also lands at No. 19 on Forbes’ 2026 list of the highest-paid athletes overall. In September, Haaland became the fastest player to 50 Champions League goals with a record-setting score in his 49th career game in the competition, and he crushed a Premier League mark three months later by netting his 100th league goal in his 111th appearance. Haaland will now have a chance to add to the accolades this summer at the World Cup, where he will be leading Norway in the country’s first appearance at the tournament since 1998—two years before he was born.
Haaland isn’t the only young athlete putting up big numbers, on and off the field. Five other phenoms 25 and under managed to crack the list of the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes: fellow soccer sharpshooter Vinicius Jr., NBA stars Anthony Edwards and Cade Cunningham, and tennis rivals Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. Combined, the six athletes hauled in an estimated $384 million over the past 12 months before taxes and agent fees, with $239 million from their salaries, bonuses and prize money and $145 million from their business endeavors.
Cunningham, Alcaraz and Sinner are making their first appearance on the list, helping nudge the average age of the top 50 athletes to 30, down from 31 last year and 33 in 2023. More athletes in the top 50 are now in their 20s than are 30 or older, the first time that has been the case since 2017.
The youth movement stands in defiance of the salary scales that the major North American sports leagues have put in place for rookies and other young athletes, tying players’ pay to their draft position and preventing them from reaching free agency for years. In MLB, for instance, players generally have to accrue six years of big league service time, on top of their time in the minors, before they can take advantage of the open market—meaning most can’t even dream of becoming one of the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes until they have already turned 26.
Here’s how these six rising sports stars ascended the earnings ranking.
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Haaland has ranked among the world’s 50 highest-paid athletes each of his four years in the Premier League, after coming over from Germany’s Borussia Dortmund in 2022, and the 25-year-old Norwegian striker got a significant raise this season thanks to a contract he signed in January 2025 that ties him to Manchester City until 2034. Haaland also has a deep stable of sponsors including Breitling, Dolce & Gabbana and Nike, but he caused a bit of controversy when he signed on to Budweiser’s World Cup campaign because alcohol advertising is banned in Norway. Haaland is at least finding novel ways to spend his money: In January, after a lackluster Champions League loss to Bodø/Glimt, Haaland and his three fellow Manchester City captains announced that they would refund the cost of tickets for nearly 400 fans who traveled to Norway for the game.
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In 2023, coming off Edwards’ first All-Star selection, the Minnesota Timberwolves gave him a five-year designated rookie maximum contract extension worth about $244 million, and the 24-year-old shooting guard has justified the hype with three more appearances in the NBA showcase, earning All-Star Game MVP honors in February. Edwards made some noise of a very different kind in October when he dropped a rap album he had produced featuring Big Sean, Pusha T, Quavo and Wale. Two months later, his Amazon Prime Video docuseries, Serious Business, released its first episode, in which he faced four-time Olympian Lily Zhang in table tennis. (She spotted him a ten-point lead in a game to 11.) Edwards also stays busy off the court with sponsors including Adidas, Prada and Sprite.
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The youngest member of this year’s list of the world’s highest-paid athletes, Alcaraz is already fourth on the ATP Tour’s career prize money list, with just under $65 million—one spot ahead of 39-year-old Andy Murray, who retired in 2024. Alcaraz also won three of tennis’ four majors over the past 12 months, triumphing at the French Open, the U.S. Open and finally the Australian Open to become the first player to complete the career Grand Slam before his 23rd birthday. The Spaniard’s rivalry with Jannik Sinner—2025’s Wimbledon champion—now looks set to dominate the sport the way that Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic ruled for a generation. Alcaraz, currently sidelined by a wrist injury, recently added partnerships with Evian, Infosys and YoPro yogurt and keeps his schedule packed with appearances and exhibitions that can pay him $2 million per event.
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Vinicius has lucrative endorsement deals with brands including Hugo Boss, Rexona deodorant and Will Bank in his native Brazil, and he has excelled on the field, winning the Best FIFA Men’s Player Award for 2024 and leading all players with 106 combined goals and assists in Spain’s La Liga over the past five seasons. But many Real Madrid fans have made him a scapegoat for the team’s disappointing performance this year, and the 25-year-old forward’s contract with Los Blancos is due to expire next year, raising speculation that they might be headed for a split. “I believe he won us our last two Champions League titles,” Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez recently told Spanish TV channel LaSexta. “Why rush it? We have a whole season to talk.”
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In the first season of Cunningham’s five-year, $269 million contract with the Detroit Pistons, his play reached a new level, carrying his team to an Eastern Conference-best 60-22 record and landing him fifth in NBA MVP voting. (League rules require that players appear in at least 65 games to be eligible for the award, but while Cunningham played just 63 in the 2025-26 regular season, the NBA and its players’ union agreed to put him on the ballot based on the “extraordinary circumstances” of a collapsed lung that held him out for 12 games down the stretch.) Off the court, the 24-year-old point guard has more than a dozen sponsors, including Ford, Impossible Foods and State Farm, and in February, Cunningham revealed he had purchased a small stake in MLB’s Texas Rangers, his hometown team.
Rebecca Blackwell/Associated Press
Sinner has three fewer major titles than Carlos Alcaraz, but the 24-year-old Italian has the advantage in the current ATP singles rankings, at No. 1 to Alcaraz’s No. 2, and recently became only the second tennis player, after Novak Djokovic, to complete the career Golden Masters—winning all nine ATP Masters 1000 events. Sinner, riding a 29-match winning streak, also has a clearer path to finish off his own career Grand Slam at the French Open now that the injured Alcaraz is set to miss the tournament, which begins next week. Sinner pocketed $6 million for his victory at the Six Kings Slam exhibition in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in October and recently picked up partnerships with Allianz insurance and Explora Journeys cruises. But he is thinking about his fellow tennis pros’ earnings, too: Like Alcaraz, he is among the stars who have begun publicly demanding that the four Grand Slam tournaments pay players a greater share of their revenues. “We give much more than what we are getting back,” Sinner said this month. “It’s not only for the top players; it’s for all of us players.”
Information about the methodology Forbes uses to compile the list of the world’s highest-paid athletes—which captures income collected between May 1, 2025, and May 1, 2026—can be found here.
With additional reporting by Hank Tucker.
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