What are the Best FIFA Football Awards? History of soccer prizes and how winners are decided

Every year, fans anticipate the excitement of the end-of-season award ceremonies, hoping to see their favourite stars recognised for their world-class greatness across the previous 12 months.

FIFA, being the world football governing body, has its own litany of trophies to give out each December, placing each superstar in the spotlight for what they deem to be "The Best" in various categories over the past year.

Global icons like Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlo Ancelotti, and many others have dotted the award's history.

AllSportsPeople brings you a look at what The Best FIFA football awards entail, how they are selected, and who has won the various trophies throughout the history of the gala.

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What are The Best FIFA Football Awards?

The Best FIFA football awards are FIFA's official awards to decide the best players, coaches, and goals from the previous calendar year.

FIFA claims their award ceremony will select "world football’s top players, coaches, goalkeepers, fans, goals and acts of fair play" via "a thorough and democratic process."

History of The Best FIFA Football Awards

FIFA's The Best awards were born in 2017 after a split between FIFA and the Ballon d'Or.

From 1991 to 2010, FIFA controlled its own World Player of the Year award. In 2010, FIFA joined forces with France Football to award the Ballon d'Or to avoid competing with the world's most famous individual award.

However, these parties split in 2017, and FIFA decided to create its own award gala and categories, hoping the governing body's status as the world's foremost football authority would generate its own pedestal for the new award system.

FIFA created its own awards for The Best men's and women's awards (with the men's carrying on from the previous FIFA World Player of the Year award), as well as resuming control of the Puskas Award for best goal, which in 2024 was split into a men's award with the same name, and a women's award called the Marta Award.

How are The Best FIFA award winners chosen?

Nominations for each award category throughout FIFA's The Best awards are chosen by a vague and unexplained process, which FIFA claims is done by "FIFA in collaboration with football stakeholders."

From there, winners are chosen by a jury which features individuals from four different categories. There are current coaches of each national team, current captains of each national team, one journalist chosen from each territory, and a fan vote on FIFA's official website.

Each voter is asked to rank their top three nominees in each category, with the first-place vote receiving five points, the second-place vote receiving three points, and the third-place vote receiving one point. The points are tallied up amongst each nominee and a winner is selected.

For the 2025 awards, the selection period is based on performances from August 11, 2024 to August 2, 2025.

Past winners of The Best FIFA

The Best Men's Player

The Best Women's Player

The Best Men's Goalkeeper

The Best Women's Goalkeeper

The Best Men's Coach

The Best Women's Coach

Puskas Award

Marta Award