World Cup 2026 Award Winners: The Full List
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Spain swept the individual honours, with one exception, and the exception is the story. Rodri won the Golden Ball as the tournament’s best player from a pre-final price around 11.0 decimal, beating a market that had installed Lionel Messi as the roughly 1.11 favourite for the same award. Every other headline market — Spain to lift, Mbappé for the Boot, Simón for the Glove — landed with its favourite. For Canadian bettors who followed the awards board through the summer, this was the one place the number lied.
Here is the full slate of winners, and then the market read on each — because the awards were, in effect, a set of settled futures.
The Full Award List
- Golden Ball (best player): Rodri (Spain). Silver Ball: Lionel Messi. Bronze Ball: Kylian Mbappé.
- Golden Boot (top scorer): Kylian Mbappé (France), 10 goals — back-to-back, and the first player ever to win the Boot at two World Cups.
- Golden Glove (best goalkeeper): Unai Simón (Spain).
- Best Young Player: Pau Cubarsí (Spain).
- Final Man of the Match: Ferran Torres (Spain).
Spain took all four team-linked honours — Golden Ball, Golden Glove, Best Young Player and the final’s MOTM. Only the Golden Boot, decided purely on goals, went to a player from another nation.
The Golden Ball: The Market’s Biggest Miss
Rodri’s award is the one that defied its price. Pre-final, the board had Messi as the favourite at around 1.11 — a near-certainty in market terms — with Rodri out around 11.0. The captain then won it from that outsider price, denying Messi a record-extending honour and pushing him to the Silver Ball; Mbappé took the Bronze.
There is a narrative behind the number. Rodri had ruptured his right ACL in September 2024 and missed most of the 2024-25 season; he anchored a World Cup win roughly twenty months after surgery. In his own words after the final: "It feels like the perfect script. I certainly didn’t expect this." He also framed the comeback directly: "I’d love for the younger generations to see that a player who touches the heavens, then descends into hell, can come back. It’s a lesson in overcoming adversity."
The Golden Boot: Mbappé, Chalk That Held
The Golden Boot was the opposite of the Golden Ball — a heavy favourite that delivered. Mbappé closed around 1.04 to win it and did, finishing top scorer on 10 goals. The decisive move came a day before the final: his brace in France’s 6-4 bronze-final win over England pushed him clear of the field. Messi, drifting to around 13.0 in the same market, was held scoreless and finished on 8.
| Award | Winner | Pre-final price | Favourite delivered? |
|---|---|---|---|
| World Cup (to lift) | Spain | 1.67 | Yes |
| Golden Boot | Kylian Mbappé (10) | 1.04 | Yes |
| Golden Ball | Rodri (ESP) | ~11.0 | No — Messi (~1.11) missed |
| Golden Glove | Unai Simón (ESP) | 1.13 | Yes |
The Golden Glove: Simón Rewards the Chalk
Unai Simón closed around 1.13 for the Golden Glove and delivered behind Spain’s record defence — seven clean sheets across the edition. His reaction caught the team framing: "If my gloves during the World Cup could talk, they would say that they haven’t had to work as much as those of other goalkeepers’. Leaving seven clean sheets are numbers that are going to cost a lot to overcome and I don’t attribute the merit to myself but to my team-mates."
- Rodri won the Golden Ball from a pre-final price around 11.0, beating favourite Messi (~1.11) — the one award the market’s top pick lost.
- Mbappé won the Golden Boot on 10 goals (~1.04 favourite), the first player ever to win it at two World Cups.
- Unai Simón (Golden Glove, ~1.13) and Pau Cubarsí (Best Young Player) completed a near-clean Spanish sweep.
- Every headline award market landed on its favourite except the Golden Ball — the single value upset of the awards board.
For how the final itself played out, see our World Cup 2026 final recap, and for the records set along the way, our tournament records page. The pre-tournament markets are on our Golden Boot odds and outright winner odds pages.
Odds cited are decimal and reflect pre-final closing lines; the awards have now settled. Canadian readers can shop award and futures markets in CAD at partner books such as WinRolla and RichRoyal.
