The Ballon d'Or comes to London: 70 years of football's biggest prize, on the map

The 70th Ballon d'Or ceremony will be held at the London Palladium on Monday 26 October 2026, the first time the awards have been staged in London. France Football and UEFA, which now run the gala together, chose the city as a tribute to Stanley Matthews, the Blackpool winger who won the first Ballon d'Or in 1956.

Argyll Street, not the Châtelet

The Palladium is a West End theatre on Argyll Street in Soho, a short walk from Oxford Circus. Designed by Frank Matcham, it opened in 1910 and seats 2,286.

The award's own website describes the move as "temporarily departing the elegant Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the host venue of the Ballon d'Or since 2019". Some reports have described it as the first ceremony held outside Paris. That is not quite right: between 2010 and 2015, when the prize was merged with FIFA's world player award, the winners were named at galas in Zurich.

The last ceremony at the Châtelet, on 22 September 2025, crowned Ousmane Dembélé of Paris Saint-Germain, while Aitana Bonmatí of Barcelona won the women's award for the third year running. This year's 30-man shortlist, published on 8 September, includes Dembélé, Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé, Lamine Yamal and Lionel Messi (UEFA). The host city's interest rests mainly with Arsenal, who have three nominees: Gabriel, Declan Rice and William Saliba.

Blackpool, 1956

Matthews was 41 when he won, edging Real Madrid's Alfredo Di Stéfano by 47 points to 44. There was no gala. According to the official Ballon d'Or website, on 18 December 1956 he received the trophy from Gabriel Hanot, one of the journalists who conceived the award, in a wood-panelled room at Blackpool Town Hall, with the town's mayor among a handful of guests.

So ESPN's line that the inaugural ceremony was held in Blackpool stands up, as long as "ceremony" is taken loosely. Bloomfield Road, Blackpool's ground, lies about 200 miles north-west of the Palladium as the crow flies.

One more London detail: across 69 editions, no London club has produced a men's winner. The prize has gone to players at four English clubs: Blackpool, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City.

Madrid and Barcelona, level on 12

To build the map, we took the full list of winners, checked it against the RSSSF archive, and credited each award to the club the winner was playing for when he received it. That includes the six FIFA Ballon d'Or years from 2010 to 2015, which both organisers count. There was no award in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Madrid and Barcelona finish level on 12, each from a single club. Real Madrid's run starts with Di Stéfano in 1957 and 1959 and Raymond Kopa in 1958, and runs through Cristiano Ronaldo's four, Luka Modrić in 2018 and Karim Benzema in 2022.

Barcelona's 12 begin with Luis Suárez in 1960 and include Johan Cruyff twice, Hristo Stoichkov, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and six for Messi. Two summer transfers kept the city from pulling clear: Ronaldo in 1997 and Luís Figo in 2000 won the award after leaving Camp Nou, Ronaldo for Inter and Figo for Real Madrid. The Ballon d'Or website credits Barcelona with 14 winners, a total that only works if both are counted.

Milan, Turin, Munich and Manchester

Milan comes third with 10, all from the two clubs that share San Siro. AC Milan account for eight, from Gianni Rivera in 1969 to Kaká in 2007, including Marco van Basten's three. Inter's two came from Lothar Matthäus in 1990 and Ronaldo in 1997.

Turin has eight, all Juventus, including Michel Platini's three in a row from 1983 to 1985. Munich has five, all Bayern: Gerd Müller, Franz Beckenbauer twice and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge twice, between 1970 and 1981.

Manchester also has five. Denis Law, Bobby Charlton and George Best won for United in the 1960s, Cristiano Ronaldo added a fourth in 2008, and Rodri won for City in 2024.

Further down, Paris, Hamburg and Kyiv have two each. Messi's 2023 award, won with Inter Miami, is the only one taken by a player at a club outside Europe.

The women's map

The women's Ballon d'Or, first awarded in 2018, has a tighter map. Barcelona lead with five: Alexia Putellas in 2021 and 2022, then Bonmatí from 2023 to 2025. Ada Hegerberg won the first for Lyon, and Megan Rapinoe won in 2019 with Reign FC, who were then playing in Tacoma, Washington.

That makes Barcelona the only city on both lists, with 17 awards between its men's and women's teams. Bonmatí, the winner for the last three years, is not among this year's 30 women's nominees, so there will be no fourth in a row.