The women’s Ballon d’Or is the most prestigious individual prize in women’s football: the one that singles out, every year, the best footballer in the world. It is awarded by the French magazine France Football — the same one behind the men’s Ballon d’Or — and voted on by specialist journalists from across the planet. To win it is, quite simply, to reach the very top.
It is a young award: it has been handed out since 2018, long after the men’s. That first edition was won by Norway’s Ada Hegerberg, the star of Lyon. A year later it went to the American Megan Rapinoe, after she had led her country to the world title. In 2020 it was not awarded, because of the pandemic.
From then on, the prize turned Blaugrana and Spanish. The Catalan Alexia Putellas won it two years running (2021 and 2022), confirming Barça as the factory of the very best. And then came the reign of Aitana Bonmatí, who claimed it in 2023, 2024 and 2025: three in a row, a record no footballer had ever achieved before.
The statistic is crushing: since 2021, every Ballon d’Or has gone to players from Barcelona and the Spanish national team. In 2025, what is more, first and second place went to two Spaniards: Bonmatí and Mariona Caldentey. Never had one country so dominated the award.
It should not be confused with The Best, the accolade handed out by FIFA which rewards something similar: they often coincide, but they are two different prizes, from two different organisations. The Ballon d’Or belongs to France Football; The Best, to FIFA.
For the Spanish supporter, the women’s Ballon d’Or has become, in recent years, an almost private appointment: the night on which the world confirms what was already known here. That the best women’s football on the planet is being played, right now, in Spanish.