Who Votes for the Ballon d’Or? Inside the Electorate That Decides Football’s Oldest Prize

The Ballon d’Or is often described as a popularity contest, but the mechanics behind it are stricter and more deliberate than the shorthand suggests. Since its creation in 1956 by the French magazine France Football, the award has been decided by a jury: a defined panel of voters, each ranking a shortlist of players, with points weighted by position. The identity of that jury has shifted several times, and understanding who holds a ballot is the key to understanding why certain players win and others, with comparable seasons, do not.

This piece sets out who votes, how the panel has grown and narrowed over the decades, how the points are counted, and the criteria voters are asked to weigh. It covers the men’s award primarily, with notes on the parallel juries that decide the women’s Ballon d’Or and the secondary trophies.

Journalists, from the very beginning

The prize was the idea of Gabriel Hanot, a former France international who became an influential editor and writer at France Football. His premise was simple: let the people who watch football professionally, week in and week out, decide the continent’s best player. The first edition in 1956, won by Stanley Matthews, was settled by a small panel of European sports journalists, each nominating and ranking players.

That founding principle, a jury of specialist writers rather than fans, coaches or players, has defined the award for most of its history. The logic is that journalists see a broad cross-section of matches, carry no club allegiance in the vote, and can be held publicly accountable because their ballots are published.

In the early decades the pool was modest and strictly European. Only players from European nations were eligible, which is why continental greats from South America and elsewhere do not appear on the early roll of honour. As the competition’s prestige grew, so did the questions about who could be considered.

Three expansions of eligibility

The electorate itself changed less dramatically than the rules on who could be voted for, and the two are easy to confuse. Two separate expansions widened the field of eligible players before a third reshaped the jury.

The first came in 1995, when eligibility opened to any player at a European club regardless of nationality. George Weah, a Liberian playing in Italy and France, became the first winner under the new rule and the first non-European recipient. The second expansion arrived in 2007, when the award became genuinely global: any player, at any club in the world, could be considered. At the same time the jury was broadened to include journalists from beyond Europe, reflecting the game’s true geography.

The FIFA years: captains and coaches join in

The biggest departure from the journalist model ran from 2010 to 2015. In those years France Football‘s award merged with the FIFA World Player of the Year to create the FIFA Ballon d’Or. The electorate was reorganised into three blocs of roughly equal weight: the captains of national teams, the coaches of national teams, and a selected journalist from each country.

Each voter in this era ranked their top three, with first, second and third choices carrying five, three and one points. Spreading the vote across captains and coaches was intended to give the award broader legitimacy, but it also changed its character. National team figures tended to reward reputation and major-tournament moments, and critics argued the result drifted away from the pure club-season assessment that had defined the magazine’s prize.

The split and the modern jury

In 2016 the partnership with FIFA ended. France Football reclaimed its trophy and returned to the format it trusted: a jury of journalists. This is the system that governs the award today.

For the men’s Ballon d’Or, the magazine invites one journalist from each of the highest-ranked football nations, using the FIFA world ranking to decide which countries are represented. The panel for the men’s prize has been set at 100 journalists, one per country, drawn from the top 100 nations. The women’s Ballon d’Or, introduced in 2018, uses a smaller jury built the same way, with voters drawn from a shorter list of leading nations.

100journalists on the men's jury, one per top-ranked nation

Each voter receives a shortlist of nominees compiled by the magazine’s editorial team, typically thirty players, and ranks their personal top selections. The weighting rewards conviction at the top of a ballot: a first-place vote is worth far more than a mid-table one, so a player who is ranked first by many journalists will usually prevail over one who is spread evenly across second and third places. In the current format voters rank their top ten, with a steep points scale that gives the most weight to the top choices and progressively less down the list.

1956first edition, won by Stanley Matthews

One feature that sets the Ballon d’Or apart from many sports awards is transparency. After the result is announced, France Football publishes every juror’s full ballot. Anyone can see exactly how the journalist from a given country ranked the candidates. That openness is both a safeguard and a source of endless debate, because unusual or seemingly partisan ballots are visible to the entire football public.

What voters are told to judge

A ballot is only as good as the criteria behind it, and the magazine sets out explicit guidance. Historically voters were asked to weigh three things: individual performance and decisive, standout quality; team performances and trophies won; and a player’s class, taking in fair play and overall career. For much of the award’s life, reputation and body of work were allowed to tip close calls.

That changed in 2022, when France Football overhauled the rules. The most consequential adjustment was switching the window of assessment from the calendar year to the football season, running from August to the following July. The aim was to align the award with how competitions actually unfold, so that a player’s work in a single coherent campaign, including the business end of continental tournaments, is judged together rather than split awkwardly across two editions.

The 2022 revision also sharpened the hierarchy of criteria. Individual performance and decisive impact were placed first, collective performances and trophies second, and the broader notion of class was reduced in weight, with career-long achievement effectively removed as a primary factor. In short, the modern award leans harder on what a player did in the season in front of the voters, and less on who they are.

The parallel and secondary juries

The main prize is not the only trophy decided on Ballon d’Or night, and the electorates differ. The women’s Ballon d’Or follows the journalist-jury model on a smaller scale. The Kopa Trophy, awarded to the best player under 21 and introduced in 2018, uses a distinctive panel: former Ballon d’Or winners cast the votes, so the young player of the year is effectively chosen by the greats who preceded them. The Yashin Trophy for the best goalkeeper, added in 2019, returns to a journalist jury.

These variations matter when you read a result. A Kopa Trophy carries the judgment of past champions; a Ballon d’Or carries the judgment of the international press corps; and awards from the 2010-2015 window carry the composite verdict of captains, coaches and writers. They are related honours, but they are not measuring the same thing with the same instrument.

Why the electorate shapes the outcome

Knowing who votes explains a good deal about the award’s history. The European-only electorate of the early decades is the reason the roll of honour skews so heavily toward players based in Europe. The FIFA-era blend of captains and coaches helps explain results that leaned on tournament reputation. And the return to a worldwide journalist jury, combined with the 2022 shift to a season-based assessment, has pushed the modern Ballon d’Or back toward a close reading of a single campaign.

The through-line is that the Ballon d’Or has almost always trusted journalists to do the judging, on the theory that the people paid to watch football are best placed to rank it. The jury has grown from a small European circle to a global panel of one hundred, the eligibility has opened from a continent to the whole game, and the criteria have tightened around on-pitch performance. The debates will never end, which is rather the point, but the machinery behind them is clear, consistent and, unusually for a major sports award, published for anyone to inspect.