Which players have
scored the most Champions League goals in the history of the
competition? Here, we look over the
all-time UEFA Champions League top
scorers.
UEFA
Champions League Top Scorers
Cristiano
Ronaldo: 140
Lionel Messi: 129
Robert Lewandowski: 103
Karim Benzema: 90
Raúl: 71
Ruud van Nistelrooy: 56
Thomas Müller: 54
Thierry Henry: 50
Kylian Mbappé: 49
Andriy Shevchenko: 48
Zlatan Ibrahimovic: 48
Mohamed Salah: 47
Erling Haaland: 46
Filippo Inzaghi: 46
Didier Drogba: 44
Neymar: 43
Alessandro Del Piero: 42
Sergio Agüero: 41
All goal totals exclude UCL
qualifiers.
Cristiano Ronaldo: 140 Goals
Cristiano Ronaldo is the all-time leading scorer in the UEFA
Champions League with 140 goals.
With the Portuguese now playing at Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr,
it’s unlikely that he’ll add to this tally, which he accumulated
over spells at Manchester United (21), Real Madrid (105) and
Juventus (14).
Ronaldo also holds the
record for most goals in a single Champions League season with
his 17 goals for Real Madrid in 2013-14, as they won the UCL trophy
by beating Atlético Madrid in the final. He followed that up with
16 goals two years later in 2015-16.
The Portuguese legend has won the competition top scorer award
on seven different occasions, which is a record across both the
European Cup and Champions League eras.
He scored in a record 93 different UCL matches – 51% of his
appearances in the competition, while eight of those saw him score
a hat-trick, which is a record he shares with Lionel Messi.
Ronaldo found the net against 38 different opponents in his
Champions League career, with his 10 goals versus Juventus the most
by any single player against an opponent in the history of the
competition.
Lionel
Messi: 129 Goals
Lionel Messi is the second highest scorer in UEFA Champions
League history with 129 goals. He does, however, hold the record of
scoring the most goals for a single club in UCL history, with 120
of his 129 goals coming at Barcelona.
He added nine more after moving to Ligue 1 giants Paris
Saint-Germain in the summer of 2021, but it’s unlikely he’ll ever
get a chance to add to his 129 goal-tally
following his move to MLS club Inter Miami.
Messi’s record of scoring against 40 different opponents in the
UEFA Champions League is more than anyone else, ahead of Ronaldo on
38. Nine of Messi’s goals came against Arsenal (7%), his favourite
opponent in the UCL.
Overall, 2022 World Cup winner Messi has scored in 18 different
seasons of UCL action, netting in every campaign since 2005-06
after failing to score in his only appearance for Barcelona in his
debut campaign of 2004-05. He shares this record with Karim
Benzema, but the French striker managed to score in all 18 of the
UCL seasons that he played in.
Messi may share the UCL record for the most hat-tricks in the
competition with Cristiano Ronaldo (eight), but he once did
something the Portuguese never managed:
score five goals in a single Champions League match. He managed
this in Barcelona’s 7-1 win over Bayer Leverkusen in March 2012 as
part of his
record-breaking 2011-12 season in which he scored 73 goals in
60 competitive club appearances.
Robert
Lewandowski: 103 Goals
Robert Lewandowski reached his century of UEFA Champions League
goals on 26 November, scoring for Barcelona against French club
Brest.
Of his 103 UCL goals, 69 came at Bayern Munich after he arrived
from Borussia Dortmund. With eight goals across the seven matchdays
of 2024-25, he’s taken his total UCL goal tally for Barcelona to
17. That means that he is just the second player in Champions
League history to score 10+ goals for three different clubs after
Cristiano Ronaldo.
He holds Bayern’s record for the most goals in Europe, ahead of
Gerd Müller (65). He also holds the Bundesliga club’s record for
most goals in a single season in this competition, netting 15 times
in 2019-20 en route to Bayern lifting the trophy. In doing so, he
became the first Polish player to finish as the top scorer in a
season of UCL/European Cup action.
Karim
Benzema: 90 Goals
With his transfer to Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia, Karim Benzema
might be 90 and out.
Benzema has scored in the most UCL seasons without having failed
to find the net in one, scoring in all 18 seasons of the
competition since first appearing in 2005-06 at Lyon.
The French striker won the Champions League top scorer award for
the first time ever in 2021-22, with his 15 goals helping Real
Madrid to the title, although he failed to score in the final win
over Liverpool in Paris.
His 78 goals for Real Madrid in the competition is only behind
Cristiano Ronaldo’s 105.
Raúl: 71 Goals
Former Spain international Raúl is Real Madrid’s third-highest
scorer in UEFA Champions League history (66), while his overall
tally of 71 is the fifth most of all players in the
competition.
Raúl was the competition’s leading scorer until November 2014,
when he was eventually overtaken by Messi and Ronaldo, while the
Real Madrid great was the first player to reach 50 UCL goals, doing
so in September 2005. In fact, he was the first Madrid player to
reach 50 goals in Europe after Alfredo Di Stéfano had previously
scored 49 times in European competition for the Spanish side.
His final season in the competition came at German side FC
Schalke 04 in 2010-11, when he scored five times as a 33-year-old.
This took his overall tally to 71 in the competition, which is more
than double any other Spanish player in the competition’s history:
Fernando Morientes is the closest to him with 33 goals.
Other Players with 50+ UCL
Goals
Ruud van Nistelrooy: 56
Goals
Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy scored 56 goals overall in the
UEFA Champions League, but that tally could have been greater had
he played more UCL action earlier in his career. He made just 11
appearances at PSV before his 25th birthday and debut for
Manchester United in the competition.
No player reached 50 UEFA Champions League goals quicker than
Van Nistelrooy (62 appearances), but he was 31 years old when he
reached that landmark.
He scored 35 goals in the Champions League for Manchester United
– a club record, ahead of Wayne Rooney (30) and Ryan Giggs
(28).
Van Nistelrooy scored more goals than anyone else to never win
the UEFA Champions League, despite playing 11 seasons in the
competition.
Thomas Müller: 54 Goals
Thomas Müller is now in his 17th Champions League season as a
Bayern Munich player, scoring in 15 of these (only failing in
2018-19 and so far in 2024-25).
Since his competition debut in 2008-09, he’s scored 54 goals and
has 25 assists. His goal tally is more than double that of any
other German player in the competition: Mario Gomez (26).
He’s won the Champions League on two occasions with Bayern
Munich, in both 2012-13 and 2019-20.
Thierry Henry: 50 Goals
Thierry Henry scored 50 goals in the UEFA Champions League
across spells at three clubs: Arsenal (35), Barcelona (eight) and
Monaco (seven).
He began life as a UCL player in style, with six goals across
his first five appearances at Monaco as a 20-year-old, before
moving to Arsenal in 1999-00. His 35 goals for the Gunners makes
him their highest scoring player in Champions League/European Cup
history.
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