The performances are finished.
The nominations are known.
And now the votes are in.
Voting for the 2026 Ballon d’Or is reported to have closed, moving the award into the final waiting period before the October 26 ceremony in London.
What follows is very different.
There can still be arguments about who should win.
Players can still score goals.
Clubs, supporters and former players can still make their cases.
But those performances and campaigns no longer alter the ballots already submitted for this edition.
The next major public moment comes on October 26, when the 70th Ballon d’Or ceremony is staged at the London Palladium.
It will be the first time the event has been held in London.
The contest has therefore entered its quietest phase.
The debate continues in public.
The ballots have moved out of public view.
Who Actually Votes?
The men’s Ballon d’Or is decided by an international jury of specialist journalists, with one representative from each of the top 100 countries in the FIFA ranking used when the nominee list was published.
For the women’s award, the jury is drawn from the top 50 countries under the same principle.
That difference matters.
The men’s and women’s awards are not decided by a global public poll, supporter vote or committee sitting together in one room.
Each eligible journalist submits an individual ranking.
The totals decide the winner.
Every Juror Has to Build a Top 10
The ballot is broader than simply naming a first choice.
Each voter selects 10 players from the 30-player shortlist and ranks them in descending order.
The scoring system rewards those positions with:
15 points for first, 12 for second, 10 for third, then 8, 7, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1.
That structure means the winner does not depend only on how many jurors rank someone first.
A player who appears consistently near the top of many ballots can build a substantial total across the electorate.
If two players finish level on points, the regulations move to the number of first-place votes, then second-place votes and further down the ballot until the tie is broken.
What Were Voters Supposed to Judge?
France Football’s regulations set out three criteria in order of importance.
First comes individual performance, decisiveness and impact.
Second comes collective performance and honours.
Third comes class and fair play.
For the 2026 award, the assessment period covers the 2025-26 season from August 3, 2025 to July 19, 2026, including international competitions.
That is important because the Ballon d’Or is no longer fundamentally a January-to-December award.
This edition is built around a defined football season.
And that season included the 2026 World Cup.
So by the time voters submitted their ballots, the competitive evidence they were instructed to consider had already closed.
Voting Closure Changes the Nature of the Race
Until the ballot window closed, every discussion around the award still sat alongside an active voting process.
After closure, that changes.
The contenders cannot add another league performance to their case.
They cannot repair a weak international tournament.
They cannot strengthen a trophy argument.
And they cannot lose votes because of something they do in October.
The dossier being judged is effectively frozen.
That does not mean the winner should be described as publicly known.
The ballots still have to be processed and the final ranking remains undisclosed.
But the sporting case on which the 2026 award is being decided is complete.
Not Every Ballon d’Or Category Uses the Same Jury
The main men’s and women’s awards use the journalist system.
But the wider Ballon d’Or programme contains several categories with different voting arrangements.
France Football’s rules, for example, use former Ballon d’Or winners for the young-player awards rather than simply applying the same 100- and 50-journalist system to every trophy.
The 2026 ceremony will also include men’s and women’s Ballon d’Or awards alongside young-player, goalkeeper, coach, club and striker honours, as well as the Sócrates Award.
That distinction prevents one of the easiest mistakes in explaining the process:
there is no single universal voting mechanism governing every trophy on the night.
London Will Host a Landmark Edition
This year also carries historical weight.
The Ballon d’Or was created by France Football in 1956, making the 2026 ceremony its 70th anniversary edition.
London was selected as host city in tribute to Stanley Matthews, the English forward who became the first Ballon d’Or winner 70 years ago.
France Football continues to present the award, with UEFA co-organising the ceremony.
The move to the London Palladium therefore changes the setting without changing ownership of the award itself.
What We Still Do Not Know
Voting being closed does not mean every part of the process is public.
The final totals are not.
The final ranking is not.
Individual ballots should not be treated as public unless they are formally released.
And there is no basis for converting betting markets, fan polls or media campaigns into an official indication of who has won.
One further detail remains worth guarding carefully.
Current reporting places the closure in late September, but no official France Football source located by this desk publishes a definitive closing clock time and time zone.
So the safe fact is straightforward:
the 2026 Ballon d’Or voting phase is reported to have closed.
Anything more precise about the hour requires stronger first-party confirmation.
The Campaign Is Over. The Waiting Begins.
The Ballon d’Or debate will not stop because voting has.
It may actually become louder.
But the nature of that debate has changed.
Before voting closed, arguments could still reach jurors who had not submitted their rankings.
Now they are aimed at an audience waiting for a result that has already passed through the ballot stage.
The voters have judged the season.
The points system will turn those rankings into an order.
And on October 26 in London, that order will finally become public.
Until then, all that remains is the part football awards do best:
the waiting, the speculation and the secrecy before the envelope is opened.