The official Ballon d'Or website carried three different articles naming three different men's winners on Monday, hours before the 70th edition of the France Football award was due to be presented at the Palladium Theatre in London, according to RTE.ie.
The first link to surface announced that England captain Harry Kane had taken the honour, with the piece describing his league and cup scoring over the 2025/26 season as record-breaking. Links to further articles then emerged naming Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe and Barcelona winger Lamine Yamal as the recipient.
Organisers responded with a statement saying portraits of nominees prepared by Ballondor.com had been put online unintentionally. They said the pieces had been drafted ahead of time for every nominee in case of a win, and that they did not disclose the podium, which the organisers said remained unknown to everyone at that point.
Why it matters
The Ballon d'Or is the most closely followed individual prize in football, and the identity of its winner is normally kept sealed until the envelope is opened on stage. A leak of any kind undercuts the theatre the ceremony is built on, and three conflicting versions published within a short window left the public with no reliable signal at all.
The episode also landed on the night the award marked its 70th edition, with the ceremony staged in London rather than Paris. Coverage from BBC, Sky Sports and The Guardian had framed the evening around the men's race, with Kane and Alexia Putellas listed among the leading contenders, according to Sky Sports.
Drafts held for every nominee
The explanation offered by the organisers rests on a standard practice for awards with a shortlist: material is written in advance for each possible outcome so that coverage can go live the moment a name is read out. In this case, that preparatory work reached the public domain instead of staying behind the scenes.
The statement did not say how the articles became accessible, and it did not confirm or deny any of the three names. It also drew a distinction between a prepared profile and the final result, insisting the podium had not been settled in public view.
RTE.ie reported that the Kane article appeared first, with the Mbappe and Yamal versions found afterwards. The order in which the links appeared does not by itself indicate anything about the result, since all three were described by the organisers as templates awaiting the outcome.
A night already in the spotlight
The confusion arrived as the football world turned to London for the ceremony, with live coverage running across major outlets. Sky Sports had billed Kane and Putellas among the favourites, while Sky News reported that Kane was the frontrunner after a goal-filled season. The Guardian carried live updates from the event.
Those pre-ceremony assessments were published before the website issue emerged and were based on form and scoring records rather than any inside knowledge of the vote. They should not be read as confirmation of anything the organisers have said.
For Kane, the prospect of the prize followed a campaign in which he scored heavily in both league and cup football, a detail that appeared in the mistakenly published draft and was widely discussed beforehand. Mbappe and Yamal, both named in the errant articles, were also part of the wider conversation around the shortlist.
What the statement does and does not settle
The organisers' wording is narrow. It confirms that the articles existed, that they were prepared for all nominees, and that they were published by accident. It does not identify who was responsible for the publication, whether the error was technical or procedural, or whether any internal review will follow.
It also leaves the central question untouched. Until the winner is announced on stage, the only authoritative source remains the ceremony itself, and the organisers have asked the public to treat the drafts as what they say they are: unused material for outcomes that had not yet been decided.
For readers, the practical takeaway is that a name appearing on the award's own website on Monday was not proof of anything. The same page carried three of them.
What happens next rests on the announcement at the Palladium Theatre, after which the prepared article for the actual winner — whichever of the drafts it turns out to be — will presumably be the only one that stands.
