Spain and newly-signed London City Lionesses midfield legend Alexia Putellas has etched her name deeper into women’s football history, securing a record-matching third Ballon d’Or Feminin title and keeping the prestigious award in Spanish possession for the sixth consecutive year. The 32-year-old captain led Barcelona to a historic 2025-26 quadruple, highlighted by a Women’s Champions League triumph, before making a landmark high-profile move to the Women’s Super League’s London City Lionesses under US billionaire owner Michelle Kang in July 2026. She now stands level with her former Barcelona and Spain teammate Aitana Bonmati, who claimed three consecutive Ballon d’Or Feminin titles between 2023 and 2025, after Putellas first won back-to-back crowns in 2021 and 2022. This six-year unbroken streak of Spanish dominance breaks a prior run of wins for global stars including Norway’s Ada Hegerberg (2018) and United States icon Megan Rapinoe (2019), the only two non-Spaniards to ever lift the women’s award. Putellas’ latest top prize marks a triumphant full-circle comeback from a 2022 career-threatening anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury that sidelined her on the eve of the UEFA Women’s Euro tournament, a setback that once threatened to derail her ascent. In her acceptance remarks, the Catalan icon known affectionately as ‘La Reina’ (The Queen) delivered an empowering message to aspiring young athletes worldwide: “All the boys and girls around the world – if you love football and if you want to play football, play football. It doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or if you’re a girl. Doesn’t matter where you come from. Don’t listen if someone tells you, you can’t do it. Believe in yourself.” The award was decided by votes from an international panel of journalists drawn from FIFA’s top 50 ranked nations, with Barcelona striker Ewa Pajor finishing in second place and Manchester City forward Khadija Shaw taking third spot. In the concurrent men’s Ballon d’Or announcement, England captain Harry Kane claimed the top honour, becoming the first English male player to win the award since Michael Owen in 2001. Putellas’ standout 2025-26 campaign for Barcelona underlined her status as one of the sport’s all-time greats, even as the club navigated a five-month injury absence for fellow star Aitana Bonmati. Across all competitions that season, she notched 21 goals and 13 assists, ranking third and second respectively across all players in Europe’s top five women’s leagues. Her seven Champions League goals placed her among the competition’s top scorers, outperformed only by three dedicated strikers: Pernille Harder, Alessia Russo, and eventual second-place Ballon d’Or finisher Ewa Pajor. Her impact extended far beyond goalscoring, however: in Barcelona’s seventh consecutive Liga F title run, she ranked joint-sixth for assists and fourth for open-play chances created, while across all domestic and continental competitions that term, she generated more total chances (89, including 19 high-value big chances) and completed more final-third passes (965) than any other player competing in Liga F, the Champions League, Copa de la Reina, or Supercopa de Espana. Her 36 chances created in that season’s Champions League matched Bayern Munich’s Klara Buhl for the tournament lead, marking the second-highest single-edition total in the competition’s history behind Caroline Graham Hansen’s 38 in 2021-22. Born and raised in Mollet del Valles, a Catalan municipality 12 miles northeast of Barcelona, Putellas grew up playing street football, attending matches at Camp Nou, and idolising Barcelona legends Andres Iniesta, Rivaldo, and Ronaldinho. After stints at local side CE Sabadell, Espanyol, and Levante, she returned to her childhood club Barcelona in 2012, launching a 14-year tenure that yielded an extraordinary 38 trophies, including 10 league titles and four continental Champions League crowns. Though she retained her 2022 Ballon d’Or title shortly after her ACL injury, her path back to peak form was gradual: she only featured in a limited role during Spain’s victorious 2023 Women’s World Cup campaign, a disappointment that drove her relentless work to recapture her elite level. After netting in the 2024 Champions League final, she elevated her game even further in 2025-26, and also scored twice in a June 2026 4-0 rout of England that secured Spain’s qualification for the 2027 Women’s World Cup at the expense of the home Lionesses side. When her Barcelona contract expired that summer, she turned down competing offers from clubs in Mexico and the United States to join London City Lionesses, citing a hunger for new personal and professional growth. Through her first seven WSL appearances, she has already registered three goals and one assist, proving that even at the highest level of a new league, her legendary status remains fully justified.