Today, Monday (September 22), the best footballer of the 2024/25 season will be crowned at the Ballon d’Or 2025 ceremony in Paris. There are also nine other categories, such as “Best Female Soccer Player,” “Best Goalkeeper,” “Best Goal Scorer,” and “Club of the Year.”
Ballon d’Or 2025: Date, Time, Broadcast
Date & time: When is the Ballon d’Or 2025?
The Ballon d’Or award ceremony will take place today, Monday, September 22, 2025. The venue for the ceremony honoring the best of the best in world soccer is the venerable Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, which otherwise hosts classical concerts and operas.
The Ballon d’Or 2025 awards ceremony will begin at 9:00 p.m.
Before that, however, there will be the famous walk down the red carpet, as seen at the Oscars and other film awards. All Ballon d’Or 2025 nominees and former soccer greats will be on display for photographers and media representatives from 7:00 p.m.
TV broadcast & livestream: Who is showing the Ballon d’Or 2025 live?
All soccer fans can watch this year’s Ballon d’Or awards live on TV or via livestream as the best male and female soccer players of the past season are crowned.
The streaming service DAZN will broadcast the Ballon d’Or 2025 awards ceremony live today (Monday, September 22). Tom Kirsten and Nico Seepe will provide commentary on the Golden Ball awards ceremony.
At the same time, DAZN will also broadcast the Ballon d’Or 2025 awards ceremony on linear TV on the DAZN 2 channel.
The World Footballer of the Year awards can also be seen on Sky on Monday evening. There, the Ballon d’Or will be broadcast live on TV on its news channel Sky Sport Newss and via stream on skysport.de.
A third option is YouTube, where the Ballon d’Or 2025 broadcast can also be seen.
Who will win the Ballon d’Or 2025? These are the World Footballer favorites
Theoretically, all 30 players on the Ballon d’Or 2025 list of candidates could be awarded the Golden Ball. Realistically, however, only about two players have a real chance of being honored with the prestigious gold trophy.
The two big Ballon d’Or favorites for 2025 are Ousmane Dembele and Lamine Yamal.
Why Dembele will win the Ballon d’Or 2025
Ousmane Dembele is ahead in the experts’ and fans’ predictions for the world footballer of the year. The best sports betting providers also see Dembele as the big favorite for the Golden Ball.
The odds for Dembele to win the Ballon d’Or in 2025 are a meager 1.22, which corresponds to an 82 percent probability of winning. Conversely, there is only a 12 percent chance that he will not win the Golden Ball.
Why Dembele will be the new World Footballer of the Year: He won the treble with Paris St. Germain. He won the national championship and cup, and also led the sheikh’s club to its first Champions League title. With five goals and four assists, he played a key role in the triumph in Europe’s premier club competition.
World Footballer of the Year: What speaks in Yamal’s favor?
According to the Ballon d’Or betting odds from Bet365, Lamine Yamal is probably the only one who could challenge Dembele for the World Footballer award.
The FC Barcelona super talent had a fantastic season and played a major role in winning the Spanish championship title with a total of 24 points (9 goals, 15 assists).
However, in the Champions League, where Yamal scored 5 goals and provided 4 assists, the team’s journey came to an end in the semi-finals. This could be the decisive difference between him and Dembele in the Ballon d’Or 2025 prediction.
Ballon d’Or 2025 favorites: Who else has a chance?
If you take the World Soccer Betting odds as a reference, none of the other 30 Ballon d’Or nominees stand a chance of winning the prestigious award. They will probably just have to watch as Dembele or Yamal are presented with the Golden Ball.
This also applies to Mohamed Salah of Liverpool FC. The Egyptian was voted “Premier League Player of the Year” last season and played a major role in the Reds’ championship title. However, Salah and Liverpool FC were eliminated in the round of 16 of the Champions League.
Incidentally, Vitinha appears in third place in the bookmakers’ ranking of Ballon d’Or betting odds. Like his teammate Ousmane Dembele, the PSG playmaker won the treble last season.
His shortcoming: he plays in central defensive midfield. One player in this position – Rodri – won the Ballon d’Or last year. It seems unlikely that a defensive player will be named World Footballer of the Year twice in a row.
Triple winners Paris St. Germain will generally be represented by a large contingent in the Ballon d’Or 2025 broadcast. In addition to Dembele and Vitinha, Achraf Hakimi, Fabian Ruiz, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, and Gianluigi Donnarumma, who has since moved to Man City, are also nominated.
Raphina of FC Barcelona and Cole Palmer of Chelsea are quite high up in the World Footballer of the Year odds, but they won’t have a real chance. Although Palmer won the Conference League with Chelsea and also the Club World Cup in the summer.
Also nominated but without a chance are Real Madrid’s Vinicius Jr. and Kylian Mbappe. As well as the Bundesliga contingent, including Harry Kane (FC Bayern), Serhou Guirassy (Dortmund), and former Leverkusen player Florian Wirtz.
Ballon d’Or 2025 nominees – all 30 candidates at a glance
- Kylian Mbappé (Real Madrid)
- Vinícius Júnior (Real Madrid)
- Jude Bellingham (Real Madrid)
- Ousmane Dembélé (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Gianluigi Donnarumma (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Désiré Doué (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Achraf Hakimi (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Paris Saint-Germain)
- João Neves (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Vitinha (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Fabian Ruiz (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Nuno Mendes (Paris Saint-Germain)
- Robert Lewandowski (FC Barcelona)
- Pedri (FC Barcelona)
- Raphinha (FC Barcelona)
- Lamine Yamal (FC Barcelona)
- Florian Wirtz (Bayer Leverkusen / Liverpool FC)
- Alexis Mac Allister (Liverpool FC)
- Mohamed Salah (Liverpool FC)
- Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool FC)
- Denzel Dumfries (Inter Milan)
- Lautaro Martínez (Inter Milan)
- Erling Haaland (Manchester City)
- Harry Kane (FC Bayern Munich)
- Michael Olise (FC Bayern Munich)
- Serhou Guirassy (Borussia Dortmund)
- Cole Palmer (Chelsea FC)
- Declan Rice (Arsenal FC)
- Viktor Gyökeres (Sporting / Arsenal FC)
- Scott McTominay (SSC Napoli)
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Ballon d’Or 2025 Awards: What categories are there?
The most prestigious event in world soccer no longer just involves an award for the best soccer player.
At the 2025 Ballon d’Or awards ceremony, the Golden Ball will be awarded in a total of 13 categories. These include the “Best Female Footballer” – the so-called Ballon d’Or Feminin. Here, too, there is a list with a total of 30 nominations.
There are also awards for the best male and female goalkeepers, the best male and female strikers, and the best male and female coaches of the past season.
These are the 13 categories and awards
- Ballon d’Or Men
- Ballon d’Or Women
- Kopa Trophy (Best U21 Player)
- Kopa Trophy (Best U21 Player)
- Yashin Trophy (Best Goalkeeper)
- Yashin Trophy (Best Goalkeeper)
- Gerd Müller Trophy (Best Striker)
- Gerd Müller Trophy (Best Female Forward)
- Men’s Coach of the Year
- Women’s Coach of the Year
- Socrates Award (Best Humanitarian Achievement by a Player)
- Club of the Year in Men’s Soccer
- Club of the Year in Women’s Soccer
