How the Goal of the Tournament vote works at FIFA and UEFA

1. Shortlist

   FIFA or UEFA's observers cut the tournament's goals down to a list: 12 of 308 at the 2026 World Cup.

2. Vote

   Fans vote online. At the EURO the observers rank the goals too; the Puskás Award adds a FIFA Legends panel at equal weight.

3. Result

   The winner is announced after the final, usually within weeks. Shares are not always published.

Every best-goal award in football ends with the same scene: a list of ten or so clips, a voting page, and a winner announced a week or two after the final. What happens before that list exists differs a good deal between FIFA and UEFA, and in 2026 FIFA changed its own process.

The World Cup vote

FIFA has run a public vote for the World Cup Goal of the Tournament since 2006. It does not say who picks the shortlist or how. The numbers it has published give an idea of the scale: 18 goals on the 2018 list, which drew over three million votes and ran until 23 July 2018, and more than four million votes in 2014.

For 2026 the format changed. With 48 teams and 104 matches, FIFA held a fan poll after each phase: the group stage, then each knockout round. Eldor Shomurodov’s lob for Uzbekistan won the group-stage poll, Sidny Lopes Cabral’s curler for Cape Verde won the round of 32, Erling Haaland’s goal against Brazil took the round of 16 with 34%, and Julián Álvarez won the combined quarter-final and semi-final poll with 37.2%. A final ballot of 12 goals, chosen from the 308 scored, then decided the winner. It closed on Monday 27 July, and Cabral finished first.

Shomurodov’s lob, a group-stage goal, finished second in the final ballot, weeks after it had first won its phase.

The EURO vote: observers first

UEFA works with a group of technical observers, former coaches and players who attend every match and write the official tournament analysis. For EURO 2020 the group of 16 included Fabio Capello, David Moyes, Esteban Cambiasso and Roy Keane. At the end of the tournament they vote together on the best goals.

How that ranking is used has changed. At EURO 2020 the observers picked ten goals and fans chose between them: nearly 800,000 votes in just over 24 hours, with Patrik Schick first. At EURO 2024 the observers published their own top ten on 16 July, with Lamine Yamal first, and a separate fans’ vote on EURO2024.com produced a different winner, Mert Müldür. Both results were reported by UEFA, and both are listed on the EURO page.

At EURO 2012 there was only a fans’ poll, which Zlatan Ibrahimović won with 39.9%, and in 2016 the fans’ vote went to Zoltán Gera with 32% from a list of five, from well over 150,000 votes.

The Puskás Award vote

The Puskás Award is the yearly version and uses a fixed system. FIFA shortlists the goals scored in a qualifying period, eleven in recent years. Two groups then vote: a panel of FIFA Legends and fans registered on FIFA.com. Each voter picks three goals, and FIFA counts the two groups at equal weight, so a goal cannot win on fan numbers alone.

That is visible in the 2025 result. Santiago Montiel won with 21 points, 13 from the panel and 8 from fans. Declan Rice had more fan points, 11, but only 6 from the panel, and finished level on 17 with Lamine Yamal. Accounts differ on the exact scale behind those points, with figures of 5, 3 and 1 or 10, 3 and 1 for first, second and third, but the equal weighting is FIFA’s stated rule.

The qualifying window

A Puskás goal does not have to be scored in the calendar year on the trophy. FIFA sets a window that runs roughly from one summer to the next, and the dates move each time: the 2023 award covered goals from 19 December 2022 to 20 August 2023, the 2025 award goals from 11 August 2024 to 2 August 2025. That is why Alejandro Garnacho’s overhead kick at Goodison Park, scored on 26 November 2023, became the 2024 winner and was announced in Doha more than a year after he scored it. It also means a World Cup or EURO goal can turn up on the Puskás list long after its tournament award has been decided, as Patrik Schick’s did in 2021.

What the vote rewards

Fans and observers disagreed at EURO 2024, and probably at EURO 2016, where accounts of the observers’ pick differ. The observers put Lamine Yamal’s semi-final goal first and Mert Müldür’s volley sixth; the public reversed it. At the World Cup, where only fans vote, four of the six winners came from teams that did not reach the semi-finals, and two from teams that lost the match in which the goal was scored.

The full winners lists are on the World Cup, EURO and Puskás Award pages.