The World Cup Golden Boot race is down to the final match, and it is still too close to call. Kylian Mbappe and Lionel Messi are tied on eight goals each with one game remaining, putting the tournament’s top-scorer award on a knife edge.
The Golden Boot goes to the World Cup’s leading goalscorer, and this year’s race has been shaped by a small group of players who kept scoring deep into the tournament. Mbappe and Messi now sit above the rest of the field, while only four teams are still involved and three of them account for the current top four in the standings.
How the race got here
Mbappe arrived at this point after winning the 2022 World Cup Golden Boot with eight goals, and he is back in the same neighborhood again. Messi, meanwhile, moved level on eight goals and also registered his fourth assist in the semi-final against England. That extra playmaking edge matters because the tiebreak could also hinge on assists and minutes played.
The two stars have also climbed the World Cup’s all-time scoring list during the 2026 tournament, overtaking Miroslav Klose. Messi had already made history in the opening match against Algeria, when his hat-trick tied Klose on 16 World Cup goals. Mbappe and Messi have now pushed beyond that mark during the competition.
What the history says
If the race ends tied, the comparison will be even more interesting because the World Cup has seen very different scoring benchmarks over the years. Just Fontaine’s 13 goals in 1958 still stand as the single-tournament record, while Gerd Muller scored 10 in 1970. More recently, Harry Kane won the 2018 World Cup Golden Boot with six goals, and Mbappe’s eight-goal haul in 2022 set a higher modern bar.
Messi has been here before, too. In 2014, he received the Golden Ball with four goals and one assist. In 2022, he won the Golden Ball again with seven goals and three assists, showing how the World Cup’s top individual honors can split between scoring and all-around influence.
With one game each to go, the Golden Boot race is still alive. Mbappe and Messi are tied on eight goals, and the final result may come down to the smallest of margins before the trophy is awarded.
