France Football spreads false rankings to protect Ballon d'Or 2026 secrecy

France Football editor-in-chief Vincent Garcia has lifted the veil on measures taken to preserve secrecy around the 2026 Ballon d’Or winner, whose ceremony is being held in London tonight for its 70th edition.

According to Garcia, the name of Ousmane Dembélé’s successor is known to only a handful of people. “On the number of people who know who the Ballon d’Or is, I can’t be the only one. Let’s say it can be counted on the fingers of one hand,” he told Brut. The voting process itself has also been overhauled: gone are ballots sent by email or WhatsApp, replaced by “quite a technical process that has been working rather well for a few years.”

To sow confusion, the editorial team goes so far as to circulate false information. “We set a few traps, obviously. It can be false newspaper leads. It can be false rankings that circulate,” Garcia reveals. A strategy made necessary by the multiplicity of stakeholders involved upstream — players, clubs, agents — and the leak risks that result.

Since 2025, the winner is no longer informed of their victory before the ceremony, a practice abandoned precisely to limit these risks. “It’s become increasingly difficult to keep a secret like that when you see the winners beforehand,” explains the editor-in-chief. The circle of people potentially in the know proves difficult to control: family, staff, agents, and even the hairdresser who prepares the player for the evening.

The logistics of travel also constituted a clue in itself: some players were reluctant to make the trip if they knew in advance they would leave empty-handed. By eliminating this prior information, France Football hopes to maintain suspense until the on-stage reveal.