Blake Krass breaks down which players have the best chance to win the coveted Golden Boot at the 2026 World Cup.
The World Cup is a team competition with intense national pride on the line, as well as the iconic trophy. While that is the ultimate goal for everyone in the competition, winning the Golden Boot at the World Cup is also a prestigious individual honor. The Golden Boot is awarded to the player who scores the most goals at the World Cup. There are a few top contenders, but with such a small sample size of matches, there is a big crop of players with the potential to win the award.
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There are a lot of factors when it comes to picking who will win the Golden Boot at the World Cup, so it’s tougher than making a Golden Boot pick for the Premier League. Over the course of a long season in the Prem, the cream always rises to the top. Over the past 10 seasons in the Premier League, either Harry Kane, Mo Salah or Erling Haaland have won at least a share of the Golden Boot nine times. Only Jamie Vardy in 2019-20 broke that decade-long run of dominance. It seems incredibly likely that Haaland will secure the Premier League Golden Boot again this season to keep that run going.
However, at the World Cup, there is a much more limited sample size of games. That means one or two great games from a player can win them a Golden Boot. How deep a team goes into the tournament also plays a big factor. Every team plays three group stage games, but if a team doesn’t make it out of the group stage, it’s nearly impossible to win the Golden Boot. A team that makes a run all the way to the final gives its players a much better chance of winning the award.
Kylian Mbappe is an unsurprising favorite as he is La Liga’s top goalscorer, and France is the favorite to win the World Cup. Behind him is Harry Kane, the Bundesliga’s top goalscorer, whose England squad should go deep into the tournament. The great Lionel Messi is also high on the odds board because, well, he’s Messi. The more interesting pick is Erling Haaland, the Premier League’s top goalscorer, as his Norway team is not as likely to go far in the tournament.
The most recent Golden Boot winner is Kylian Mbappe. Despite Argentina defeating France in the World Cup final, Mbappe edged out Messi by one goal for the award. In 2018, it was Harry Kane who won the Golden Boot, with England making the semi-finals. In 2014, James Rodriguez came from out of nowhere to win the award. He was a relative unknown on the global stage at that time, and Colombia only made the quarter-finals, making it one of the more surprising Golden Boot wins ever.
So, looking at recent history, it is the big stars like Mbappe, Messi and Kane that score the most goals despite the smaller sample size. However, it’s always possible for someone to emerge from much further down the odds board, as James did in 2014.
Harry Kane is my pick to win the 2026 World Cup Golden Boot. It is not a flashy pick, but there has not been a more consistent goalscorer for club and country over the past decade than Kane. He scored at least 24 goals in all competitions for Tottenham from 2014 to 2023. In his three seasons at Bayern Munich, he has been unstoppable. He scored 44 goals in his first season in Germany, 41 in the following season, and has an astonishing 55 goals with a couple of games still left to play this season. It is Kane’s best-ever season from a goalscoring perspective at 32 years old.
Kane is the captain of the England squad and wants to finally win a trophy for the Three Lions more than anyone. He will enter this tournament full of confidence after his record-breaking season, but with a chip on his shoulder to finally win a trophy for England. That is the perfect recipe for Kane to score a lot of goals in this tournament. As previously noted, Kane won the Golden Boot at the 2018 World Cup and won a share of the Golden Boot at Euro 2024. He is in the best form of his life and is the clear primary goalscorer for England, while other top teams have more attacking options that could distribute their goals more evenly.
My longshot pick is Ousmane Dembele at +2000. It’s hard to call Dembele a true longshot, as he won the 2025 Ballon d’Or. However, due to being teammates with Kylian Mbappe, he is much further down the odds board than he should be. Dembele was the joint-leading goalscorer in Ligue 1 last season despite playing five fewer games than the player he shared the award with. Due to injuries, Dembele has only started nine games for PSG in Ligue 1 this season, but has 10 goals in the league. In the Champions League, he has seven goals in 10 starts with the final still to come.
Dembele always seems to rise to the occasion on the big stage. Across the four Champions League matches against Liverpool and Bayern Munich, he scored five goals. At the 2022 World Cup, Dembele was still a player struggling with injuries and nowhere near the incredible form he has been in the past couple of years. While Dembele has proven his quality at PSG over the past couple of seasons, this is his chance to prove how great he can be on the biggest stage in world football. For such a prolific goalscorer to be on a team that is the favorite to win the tournament, I will take a shot on Dembele to win the Golden Boot at 20/1 odds.
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