The 2026 Kopa Trophy shortlist is out, and Lamine Yamal is back on it. The Barcelona forward, who won the men’s award in 2025, is among nine nominees in the men’s category as the race for soccer’s top young-player prize begins again.
That makes him the name most readers will search for first today. Yamal collected the 2025 trophy with 124 points, ahead of Paris Saint-Germain’s Desire Doue on 72 and Joao Neves on 23, and he finished second in the main men’s Ballon d’Or behind PSG forward Ousmane Dembele. He became the first player to win the men’s Kopa Trophy twice, which gives this year’s shortlist an immediate edge.
The Kopa Trophy is one of the awards handed out at the Ballon d’Or ceremony and recognizes the best young soccer talent in the world. It is named after Raymond Kopa, the French legend who won the Ballon d’Or in 1958 and remains the only French player to have done so. The winner is chosen by a jury made up exclusively of former Ballon d’Or winners, which keeps the award tied directly to the game’s past champions.
The men’s list also includes Pau Cubarsi and Warren Zaire-Emery, with eight other contenders named alongside them, though the full field was not detailed here. The women’s award has five nominees: Veerle Buurman of Chelsea, Vicky Lopez and Clara Serrajordi of Barcelona, Felicia Schroder of Hacken and Real Madrid, and Lily Yohannes of OL Lyonnes. Barcelona teammate Vicky Lopez claimed the women’s award in 2025, extending the club’s reach across both categories.
That overlap matters because the shortlist now points straight toward the next Ballon d’Or stage. The 2026 ceremony is scheduled for October 26 at London’s Palladium Theatre, where the Kopa Trophy will again sit among the night’s headline honors. For Yamal, the question is no longer whether he belongs on the list. It is whether the same young player can turn another nomination into a third straight statement.
