Every Ballon d'Or Féminin Winner, 2018 to Now

The Ballon d'Or Féminin has been awarded only since 2018, yet its roll of honour already reads like a compressed history of the modern women's game. From Ada Hegerberg's trailblazing first win to Aitana Bonmatí's back-to-back triumphs, each award has captured not just the best player of a season, but the state of the sport itself.

Seven editions in, the list shows a clear arc: an era of Lyon and Norway, a solo American masterpiece, and then the full flowering of Barcelona's Spanish core. Here is every winner, and what each victory said about the game around her.

The complete winners list

The 2020 edition was cancelled amid the pandemic, the only gap in the sequence. That missing year almost certainly cost Hegerberg or a Lyon teammate another entry, coming as it did at the end of the French club's five-in-a-row European run.

What the list reveals

Barcelona's grip on the award mirrors their grip on Europe. Four consecutive wins through Putellas and Bonmatí track exactly with the club's run of four finals in five years. When one club supplies the sport's dominant team and its national-team core, individual awards follow the same gravity.

The geographic story is just as striking. Every winner so far has played her club football in Europe, and five of the six awards have gone to players from two clubs: Lyon and Barcelona. The NWSL's only representative remains Rapinoe, whose 2019 win was earned almost entirely on international duty in France.

The defining moments

• 2018: Hegerberg uses her speech to urge girls to believe in themselves, a landmark moment.
• 2019: Rapinoe wins amid a World Cup she dominated on and off the pitch.
• 2021: Putellas becomes the first Spanish winner, completing Barcelona's treble season.
• 2022: Putellas defends the title despite missing the Euros through injury.
• 2023-24: Bonmatí matches her teammate's double and claims the sport's biggest stages.

Bonmatí's 2023 win carried particular weight. She was player of the tournament as Spain won the World Cup, then drove Barcelona to the Champions League, scoring in the semi-final comeback and controlling the final. The 2024 retention, after another European title and a Nations League with Spain, made her only the second woman to win consecutive awards.

How the award is actually judged

The trophy is decided by a jury of specialist journalists, one per country from the top-ranked football nations, voting on ranked lists of nominees. Since 2022 the award judges a season rather than a calendar year, aligning it with the rhythm of club and international competition.

Individual performance weighs heaviest, but team trophies shape the voting bloc every year. That is why European champions and World Cup winners dominate the list: the biggest stages produce the defining evidence. A brilliant season without a major trophy has yet to win, and that pattern is unlikely to break soon.

Who breaks the Barcelona run?

The award's short history suggests the next winner comes from the team that defines its season, which keeps the candidates clustered: Bonmatí and Putellas themselves, Arsenal's Champions League winners, Chelsea's record signings, or a Lyon revival. A first winner from outside the Lyon-Barcelona axis would mark a genuine shift in the sport's balance of power.

What the list already guarantees is a remarkable future archive. Every winner is still playing, all are either in or approaching their prime, and the award they have contested is younger than most of their careers. In twenty years this table will be twice as long. The first seven names will still look like the founding generation, because that is exactly what they are.

One day the award will go to a player who grew up watching Hegerberg’s speech, and the circle will close. The list above is short enough to memorise today. Give it a decade, and it will need its own archive. The founders are that easy to spot.

The award ceremony itself has grown with the winners, from a side note to a prime-time event with its own audience. The women’s trophy now anchors the evening rather than opening it. That shift, quiet as it seems, says everything about the sport’s direction.

The next ceremony will add another name, and the debate about who deserves it has already begun. That argument, once a niche conversation, is now mainstream football talk.