Despite 4-year miss, Ronaldo holds one major Ballon d'Or record Messi will never match

Cristiano Ronaldo remains ahead of Lionel Messi for Ballon d’Or nominations, with 18 to Messi’s 17 after the Argentine’s return to the 2026 shortlist. Ronaldo has won the award five times, while Messi holds the record with eight victories. Messi has also become the oldest 21st-century nominee at 39, surpassing Ronaldo’s previous mark.

This story was originally reported by Times of India — Sports. As an automated real-time news aggregator, NewsToolBar provides multi-perspective indexing and AI summarization while directing full readership directly to primary publisher sources.