2025 Ballon d'Or winners: Top candidates and award significance

The votes are in, the margins are published, and the men’s result in particular was emphatic: Ousmane Dembélé finished 321 points clear of Lamine Yamal.

Dembélé won the 69th Ballon d'Or in Paris on 22 September, receiving 1,380 points and 73 of the 100 available first-place votes. Aitana Bonmatí took the Women’s Ballon d'Or with 506 points, but her contest was far tighter: only 28 points separated her from Mariona Caldentey.

That contrast tells us plenty about the 2025 France Football award contenders. One race produced a clear season-long consensus; the other came down to the final ordering on individual ballots. If you were tracking the Ballon d'Or 2025 favourites through the season, the eye test mattered — but so did the way decisive club success accumulated around the players at the top.

The 69th edition: Dembélé’s decisive victory in Paris

The ceremony at the Théâtre du Châtelet confirmed a season that had shifted Dembélé from elite talent to its most productive version. The Paris Saint-Germain and France forward won the men’s award ahead of Barcelona’s Yamal, with PSG midfielder Vitinha completing the podium.

The final five were:

Dembélé’s 321-point advantage over Yamal is the number that cuts through most of the post-ceremony noise. This was not a late tiebreaker, nor a victory secured by a handful of sympathetic voters. Seventy-three jurors placed him first; Yamal received 11 first-place selections.

That matters because the Ballon d'Or ballot is not a simple “pick one player” exercise. Each juror ranks 10 players, so the winner needs broad support throughout the list as well as first-place backing. Dembélé did not merely top a cluster of ballots. He was repeatedly ranked as the defining player of the season.

His campaign had the kind of shape that voters tend to reward. France’s federation credited him with 37 goals for club and country in 2024-25, including eight in the Champions League. He collected five trophies with PSG and was named player of the Champions League final.

That is a powerful combination, but we should resist reducing the award to a trophy counter. The goals, the European nights and the silverware created the case; the voting scale shows how strongly journalists judged that case against the alternatives.

Dembélé did not win because one stat settled the argument. He won because his season gave voters the clearest answer across the whole ballot.

Analysing the men’s podium: why Dembélé outpaced Yamal and Vitinha

The men’s podium gave us three very different versions of a Ballon d'Or case.

Dembélé was the decisive forward at the heart of a trophy-rich PSG season. Yamal represented the extraordinary upside of a player who was still operating at an age when most attackers are learning the demands of top-level football. Vitinha was the midfielder whose control, consistency and importance to PSG’s collective made him impossible to leave out of serious discussion.

For managers and supporters, this is where the usual “who is better?” argument becomes a bit too blunt. The award is not a pure talent ranking. It is a season award, and the conditions reward a player whose individual level and team story peak together.

Dembélé: output plus the biggest-stage moments

Dembélé’s 37 goals for club and country gave the campaign a measurable base. Eight came in the Champions League, the competition that still carries enormous weight in the end-of-season football conversation. Add five trophies and the recognition as player of the Champions League final, and you can see why he became the reference point rather than simply one name in a crowded field.

There is also a practical lesson in the result. Players can spend years being labelled inconsistent, brilliant in flashes or difficult to project week to week. Then a season arrives when availability, role and confidence align. Once that happens, the previous reputation is not erased, but it stops being the headline.

Dembélé’s 2024-25 did not ask voters to imagine what he might become. It gave them a completed body of work.

Yamal: the runner-up who still changed the conversation

Yamal’s 1,059 points and 11 first-place votes are not consolation figures. They show a genuine challenge, one that was comfortably ahead of the rest of the field. The gap between second and third — 356 points — was actually larger than Dembélé’s winning margin over Yamal.

That puts the result in perspective. Yamal was not part of a three-way photo finish. He was the clear runner-up, and his place reflects how quickly he has become one of the top football players of 2025 in the eyes of the voting panel.

For the award race, youth can create a huge narrative wave. But narrative alone does not sustain 1,059 points. The jurors were asked to rank players across the entire season, and Yamal accumulated enough respect to finish well clear of Vitinha, Salah and Raphinha.

The useful distinction is this: Yamal had a Ballon d'Or-level season; Dembélé had the season that most clearly matched the award’s top line of individual performance, decisiveness and team achievement.

Vitinha: the midfielder’s case was strong, but not dominant

Vitinha’s third place, with 703 points, was significant in its own right. Midfielders often need an overwhelming tactical or tournament narrative to interrupt a forward-led award cycle. His ranking confirmed the scale of his influence within PSG’s season.

Still, the points total reveals the challenge of winning from that role. The Ballon d'Or criteria do not give goals a fixed mathematical premium, but goals and final-defining contributions remain easy for a jury to identify when they are paired with winning teams. Dembélé’s campaign contained those moments in abundance.

Vitinha’s third place should therefore not be read as a failure to make the case. It is evidence that the case was made and heard — just not strongly enough to dislodge a teammate whose season had the sharper decisive edge.

Salah and Raphinha: elite seasons, crowded ballot

Mohamed Salah finished fourth on 657 points, with Raphinha fifth on 620. Their closeness is a reminder that the lower end of the top five can be influenced heavily by the rankings from fifth to 10th on each ballot. A player does not have to be a juror’s first choice to build a serious total.

This is where public Ballon d'Or power rankings can mislead. They tend to operate like a knockout bracket: one player rises, another drops. The actual ballot is more nuanced. A voter can place Dembélé first, Yamal second, then still give meaningful points to Salah, Raphinha or Vitinha.

That is why the final list deserves more attention than the winner-only headline. It maps the broadest elite consensus of the season, not just the player who carried the trophy home.

Aitana Bonmatí’s historic hat-trick in the women’s race

Bonmatí’s third consecutive Women’s Ballon d'Or was historic, but it was not a runaway. She finished on 506 points, just 28 ahead of Mariona Caldentey.

The narrow margin is central to understanding the result. While Dembélé’s win produced a clear hierarchy at the top, the women’s race remained live right through the distribution of ranked ballots. A few altered positions among the leading players could have changed the final order.

The leading names on the women’s shortlist included Bonmatí, Caldentey, Alessia Russo, Alexia Putellas and Ewa Pajor. That depth matters. With 30 nominees and a panel ranking 10 players each, the winner must survive comparison with several outstanding cases, not simply outshine one direct rival.

Bonmatí’s third straight award places her achievement beyond a single exceptional campaign. Repeating once is difficult; repeating twice means the standard becomes harsher, because voters are no longer assessing novelty. They are asking whether the player remains the best answer to the season’s biggest question.

She was.

But Caldentey’s 28-point deficit also deserves to be treated properly. The runner-up was not an afterthought in an established hierarchy. This was a competitive vote, and the final figure confirms it.

A narrow Ballon d'Or margin is not indecision. It is a record of how fine the separation was between two fully credible winning cases.

Inside the jury room: how the voting process works

The Ballon d'Or is presented by France Football and co-organised with UEFA. It is not a FIFA award, and it is not decided by a public vote. That distinction is essential whenever social media momentum starts being presented as evidence of who “should” have won.

For the men’s award, one specialist journalist from each of the top 100 FIFA-ranked nations votes. The women’s award uses one journalist from each of the top 50 nations. Both awards begin with a 30-player shortlist.

Each voter ranks 10 players. The points system is weighted towards the top of the ballot:

1. First place receives 15 points.

2. Second place receives 12 points.

3. Third place receives 10 points.

4. Fourth place receives eight points.

5. Fifth place receives seven points.

6. Places six to 10 receive five, four, three, two and one point respectively.

The winner is the player with the highest total. If players are level on points, first-place votes are the first tiebreaker.

That format explains why a 73–11 advantage in first-place votes between Dembélé and Yamal was so telling. It did not mechanically guarantee the final margin, because lower rankings still count. But it showed that Dembélé was the overwhelming first choice across the men’s jury.

The criteria are ranked, not converted into a published formula. There is no official spreadsheet saying a Champions League goal is worth a certain number of points, or that a domestic title automatically outweighs an international performance. That is why two knowledgeable voters can see the same season and order the leading players differently.

It is also why the award retains its arguments. The process is structured, but it is not mechanical — and football does not need another debate pretending it can be solved by one column of numbers.

Beyond the stats: individual decisiveness, team success and fair play

The three official criteria are straightforward on paper:

• individual performances and how decisive a player has been;
• team performances and achievements;
• class and fair play.

The order matters. Individual performance comes first. A player is not simply carried to the prize by being on the best team. Equally, a brilliant individual season has to withstand the question every voter faces: decisive in which matches, and for what outcome?

Dembélé’s result suggests that his case landed cleanly in all three areas. The 37 goals gave his individual campaign substance. His eight Champions League goals and player-of-the-final recognition strengthened the decisiveness case. PSG’s five trophies supplied the team-achievement element.

This is the balance that separates the award from a Golden Boot race. Goals are one route to decisiveness, but not the only one. A midfielder can shape games without filling a scoring column; a defender can be vital to a champion; a forward can produce elite totals without controlling the season’s defining moments. The jury is asked to weigh all of that.

Fair play and class are sometimes treated as a ceremonial line at the end of the criteria, but they are there for a reason. The Ballon d'Or is intended as an assessment of a player’s full sporting standing across the season, not just their highlight reel. It is qualitative territory, and that means it will always attract disagreement. That is not a flaw in the process. It is the honest part of it.

For those who followed the race week by week, the 2025 results also offer a useful reset. Form swings, one big knockout tie or a viral clip can make a player feel like the obvious leader in the moment. Over a full season, the jury has a wider picture: domestic competition, Europe, international football, trophies, sustained level and the pressure moments that change a campaign.

What the 2025 results actually say

The 2025 Ballon d'Or winners were Dembélé and Bonmatí, but the results should not be flattened into two simple coronations.

Dembélé’s 1,380 points, 73 first-place votes and 321-point lead over Yamal made him the clear choice in the men’s game. Yamal’s second place was equally meaningful: he finished far ahead of a high-quality chasing group led by Vitinha, Salah and Raphinha. Bonmatí’s third consecutive win was historic, yet Caldentey’s 28-point deficit showed just how closely contested the women’s award was.

If we are taking one practical verdict from the final rankings, it is this: trust a full-season case over the noise of a single week. The best Ballon d'Or campaigns combine level, availability, decisive performances and team success. In 2025, Dembélé assembled the most convincing version of that case — and the jury did not leave much room for doubt.