Qingdao FC Overview

The 2026 World Cup is over, and so is the race for the prestigious Golden Boot - the award given to the tournament's top scorer. With the expanded 48-nation tournament coming to a close, following a month of thrilling action in North America, which star has taken home the illustrious award? Here, GOAL lists the tournament's most prolific performers.

The goalkeeper was facing retirement as recently as December last year, but he has become a USL Championship hero after breaking the World Cup save record.

Four nations made debuts at the 2026 World Cup, with Cape Verde, Curacao, Jordan and Uzbekistan gracing the grandest stage in international football for the first time. It was the tournament with the most newcomers since 2006 and Cape Verde achieved the feat of ending a 16-year wait for a debutant to reach the knockout stages, before succumbing to Lionel Messi's Argentina in a classic.

Nicolas Pepe rolled back the years with a magnificent individual performance to fire Ivory Coast into the World Cup knockout stage. The experienced attacker netted a historic brace against Curacao to ensure the Elephants progressed beyond the tournament's group stage for the first time in their footballing history.