For a year, Real Madrid treated the Ballon d'Or as if it had vanished from the football map. No posts, no tributes, no polite congratulations. Just silence and a pointed message on their own TV channel: “Right now, the Ballon d'Or no longer exists.”
Now it exists again.
With the announcement of the 30 nominees for the 2026 award, the club have stepped back into the spotlight of the Golden Orb. This time, they did not look away. They leaned in.
On their official website and social media channels, Real Madrid highlighted the four names in white on the shortlist: Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Jr., Jude Bellingham and Marc Cucurella. Four pillars of the current project, four faces of a club that had very publicly broken with the ceremony only a year earlier.
The message was simple, factual, but loaded with meaning: “Mbappe, Vini Jr., Bellingham and Cucurella are among the 30 candidates for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, awarded by France Football. The nominees have been selected for their performances during the 2025/26 season.”
No barbs. No veiled digs. Just recognition. And that alone marks a major shift.
From fury to silence
To understand the weight of this change, you have to go back to 2024.
That year, the Ballon d'Or went to Rodri. Vinicius Jr., after driving Real Madrid to a La Liga and Champions League double in 2023/24, watched the crown slip away. Inside the club, the reaction was visceral.
Real Madrid were furious. Their delegation, having learned in advance that Vinicius would not win, decided not to attend the ceremony at all. It was not a quiet disagreement. It was a full-scale rupture with an award the club had historically dominated.
The sense in the corridors of Valdebebas was clear: this was an injustice. The club did not hide behind anonymous briefings or off-the-record whispers. On 28 October 2024, RMTV carried a blunt line that echoed far beyond Spain: “Right now, the Ballon d'Or no longer exists.”
Those were not words chosen lightly. Real Madrid followed them with action.
Almost five hours of special Ballon d'Or programming, already planned on RMTV, disappeared from the schedule. When the 30 nominees were revealed for that edition, the club stayed silent. When PSG’s Ousmane Dembele eventually lifted the prize, there was no official reaction from Madrid. No congratulations, no graphics, no mention.
For a club that has long measured itself by individual and collective honours, the blackout was as symbolic as it was strategic. Real Madrid were sending a message to France Football and to the football world: if Vinicius could not win after that season, the award had lost its value in their eyes.
A calculated return
That is why this week’s posts matter.
By publicly acknowledging the 2026 nominees, Real Madrid have drawn a line under the boycott. The institution that once declared the Ballon d'Or “no longer exists” is back engaging with it, even if no one at the club has spoken of reconciliation in so many words.
The context is different now. Mbappe, finally in white, sits on the list. Vinicius is there again, older, more established, still central to everything the team does. Bellingham, the heartbeat of Madrid’s midfield, joins them. Cucurella, whose inclusion underlines his rise in the 2025/26 campaign, completes the quartet.
For the club, it is a powerful image: four Real Madrid players among the 30 best in the world. To pretend the award does not exist while their own squad is so heavily represented would stretch credibility. Recognition becomes not just a courtesy, but a statement of strength.
The change in tone does not erase the anger of 2024, nor the memory of Vinicius’ loss to Rodri. It does, though, signal that Real Madrid have chosen influence over isolation. Engaging with the Ballon d'Or means stepping back into the arena where narratives are shaped and legacies are written.
The boycott made its point. Now the club want their players back where they believe they belong: in the thick of the conversation, under the brightest lights, with their names etched into the ballots that define eras.
