Alexia Putellas has won the Ballon d'Or Feminin for a third time, and this one came with a change of address. The Spain midfielder, 32, collected the prize in London on Monday night having captained Barcelona to a quadruple last season, then left the club she joined as a girl and signed for London City Lionesses in July. The trophy stays in Spanish hands for a sixth straight year and, as Sky Sports noted, lands in the Women's Super League for the first time.
Six years, two players, one country
Putellas joins her international team-mate Aitana Bonmati on three wins apiece, which is as many as anyone has managed. Bonmati took the award in 2023, 2024 and 2025; Putellas had it in 2021 and 2022 and has now taken it back. Between them the pair have swept the last six. The prize has only existed since 2018, and the two names outside that Spanish run are Ada Hegerberg and Megan Rapinoe.
The vote comes from journalists across Fifa's top-50 ranked nations, and this one was not close in the way some recent ballots have been. Ewa Pajor, who scored eleven goals in the Champions League and plays alongside Putellas no longer, finished second. Manchester City's Khadija Shaw was third.
The numbers behind the vote
Twenty-one goals and thirteen assists in all competitions is the headline, and it ranked her third and second respectively across Europe's five biggest leagues. Seven of the goals came in the Champions League, which Barcelona won for a fourth time in six seasons. Only Pernille Harder, Alessia Russo and Pajor scored more in that competition, and all three are strikers.
What the goal tally undersells is how much of Barcelona's attacking play went through her while Bonmati was out for five months. She created 89 chances across the season, nineteen of them big ones, and completed 965 passes into the final third — more than anyone else in Liga F, the Champions League, the Copa de la Reina or the Supercopa. In the Champions League alone she matched Klara Buhl on 36 chances created, a figure nobody had reached in a single edition since Caroline Graham Hansen in 2021-22.
Why the WSL is the interesting part
Barcelona have been overwhelming favourites for every domestic trophy for years, which is usually the argument used against their players at awards time. Putellas answered it by leaving. Her contract expired, she had offers from England, Mexico and the United States, and she picked Michelle Kang's London City Lionesses, a club with no European history and plenty of money. Three goals and an assist in seven WSL games suggests the step has not cost her anything.
"I'm just always looking forward to better things and that's why I'm here too, because I always need to be moving as a person and a player," she told the BBC's Women's Football Weekly in August.
Four years ago she tore her anterior cruciate ligament on the eve of Euro 2022 and missed the tournament her country was built to win. She kept the Ballon d'Or that year anyway, then spent two seasons working back toward the level that had earned it. On stage on Monday she turned to the room and told any child watching that it does not matter whether you are a boy or a girl, or where you are from, and that nobody else gets to decide what you can do.
Award facts: Alexia Putellas, 32, wins the 2026 Ballon d'Or Feminin, her third after 2021 and 2022, equalling Aitana Bonmati's record. Ewa Pajor finished second, Khadija Shaw third. Putellas scored 21 goals and made 13 assists for Barcelona in 2025-26 before joining London City Lionesses in July. Sources: BBC Sport, Goal.
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