How is the Ballon d'Or winner decided?

WHAT HAPPENED
France Football produces a 30-player shortlist (drawn together with L'Equipe) and then invites one football journalist from each of the top 100 FIFA-ranked countries to rank their top 10 from that list. Points are allocated to those top 10s and the player with the highest total is awarded the Ballon d'Or; ties are broken by comparing the number of first-place votes, then second-place votes, and so on.

The process applies separately to the men's and women's awards, with the women's Ballon d'Or Feminine using a smaller jury of 50 journalists from the top-ranked nations. The voting period was changed in 2022 from assessing performances over a calendar year to using a single full season.

KEY CONTEXT
When it was founded in 1956 the prize was restricted to European players; eligibility rules were relaxed in 1995 to include players of any origin playing in Europe and were widened again in 2007 to cover all players worldwide. Between 2007 and 2015 national team captains and managers also voted; outside that window and since 2016 only journalists take part. From 2010–15 the award was run jointly with FIFA as the "Fifa Ballon d'Or"; FIFA now awards a separate Best Player prize, which the BBC text says lacks the Ballon d'Or’s long history and so is generally seen as less prestigious.