When the names were read out at the 2026 Ballon d’Or ceremony in London on 26 October 2026, the Women’s Kopa Trophy went, once again, to Vicky López of FC Barcelona. For anyone who had followed the Catalan club’s run of success, the result felt less like a surprise and more like a confirmation. López had won the inaugural edition of the award in 2025, and in 2026 she became the first player to retain it, giving the young women’s prize its first repeat champion.
The Kopa Trophy, named in honour of the French forward Raymond Kopa, recognises the best player in the world aged 21 or under. The men’s version has been handed out since 2018; the women’s equivalent was introduced only in 2025. That makes the record short but unambiguous: across the two editions contested so far, López has won both. There is no longer-serving champion to compare her to, because the history of the women’s award is, for now, entirely her own.
A two-time winner at twenty
López was born on 26 July 2006, which made her 20 years old at the time of her second win. She wears the No. 19 shirt for Barcelona’s women’s side and has established herself in the Spain national team, part of a generation that has carried Spanish women’s football to the front rank of the international game. Winning a youth-category award twice before turning 21 is the kind of detail that reads strangely in isolation, but it reflects how early she arrived at the top level and how quickly she settled there.
The structure of the Kopa Trophy means a player can, in principle, win it several times while still qualifying on age. That is exactly the path López has taken. Her trajectory invites an obvious comparison with her club, where the men’s Kopa Trophy has also been a repeat story through Lamine Yamal. Both are Barcelona products, both broke through as teenagers, and both have turned the under-21 award into something closer to a personal possession than a one-off recognition.
2Women's Kopa Trophies won (2025, 2026)The season behind the award
The 2026 prize rewarded a campaign in which Barcelona reasserted themselves at the summit of the women’s game. López was a central figure in a side that collected a sweep of trophies across the domestic and European calendar, the kind of concentrated success that tends to lift individual candidacies as well. Voters for the Kopa Trophy weigh performance over the preceding season, and a player operating at a high level inside a dominant, trophy-laden team is always well placed.
On the matter of her goal output, a note of caution is warranted. Published figures for her 2025/26 contribution do not fully agree. Several news summaries and statistical aggregators cite a tally in the region of 17 goals across all competitions, together with a substantial haul of assists over a heavy schedule of appearances. Her encyclopedic profile, by contrast, records a noticeably lower number. Rather than present a precise figure that the sources themselves cannot settle, it is more honest to describe her season qualitatively: she was a consistent creator and scorer, heavily involved across a long fixture list, and productive enough in both categories to feature prominently in the individual reckoning at the end of the year.
What the Kopa Trophy measures
It helps to be clear about what this award is and is not. The Kopa Trophy is not a goalscoring prize, nor a straightforward most-valuable-player vote. It is specifically a recognition of the best young player, with eligibility capped at age 21. That framing matters when assessing López’s two wins. She has not simply been the best under-21 player in a thin field; she has done so while anchored in a team competing for, and winning, the sport’s biggest honours. A young player can look outstanding in a modest side and still struggle to translate that into trophies. López’s distinction is that her individual promise has been attached to collective success from the outset.
The award also tells you something about how the women’s game has professionalised its individual recognition. For years the women’s calendar lacked the layered set of individual prizes long attached to the men’s game. The addition of a women’s Kopa Trophy in 2025 slotted a youth category into that structure, and it immediately found an obvious first face in López. That she then retained it in 2026 gave the award continuity before it had much history to draw on.
A short record, entirely hers
Because the women’s prize is so new, any leaderboard is necessarily brief. It is, however, worth setting the two editions side by side, if only to underline how complete López’s grip on the award has been to date.
| Year | Winner | Club | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Vicky López | Barcelona | Inaugural women’s Kopa Trophy |
| 2026 | Vicky López | Barcelona | First player to retain the award |
Two rows, one name. That is the entire history of the women’s Kopa Trophy as it stands, and it is a useful reminder of how a new award acquires its identity. The men’s version took time to settle into a pattern; the women’s version has, so far, been defined by a single player at a single club.
Barcelona’s production line
López’s success cannot be separated from the environment that produced her. Barcelona’s women’s team has spent several years at or near the top of the European game, and the club’s development structure has fed a steady supply of technically polished young players into that first team. In that context, a 20-year-old winning a global youth award twice is remarkable at the individual level but consistent with the club’s broader pattern. The men’s and women’s sides have both leaned on precocious talent, and both have seen that talent rewarded with the Kopa Trophy.
For Spain, the implications run alongside the club picture. A national team that has already reached the very top of the international women’s game continues to draw on a deep pool of young attacking players, and López sits squarely within it. International recognition of this kind tends to reinforce a player’s standing at both club and country, and it positions her as a reference point for the generation immediately behind her.
Takeaway
The 2026 Women’s Kopa Trophy did not rewrite the record books so much as deepen a very short one. In winning for a second consecutive year, Vicky López became the award’s first repeat champion and, for now, its only winner in any edition. The precise shape of her statistical season may remain contested across sources, but the headline fact is clean and settled: two editions of the women’s youth award, two wins, both for the same Barcelona player, both claimed before her 21st birthday. Until another name joins the list, the history of the Women’s Kopa Trophy is simply the history of Vicky López.
