A hat-trick is football’s cleanest measure of a single afternoon’s greatness: three goals, one player, ninety minutes. So when fans search for the player with most hat-tricks in football history, the modern game actually gives a clear answer.
Cristiano Ronaldo has scored 66 career hat-tricks across Sporting CP, Manchester United, Real Madrid, Juventus, and Al-Nassr, plus Portugal.
That stands as the most by any player whose entire career has been played and documented at the top level of fully professional football.
Lionel Messi sits five behind on 61 and is still adding to his total deep into his late 30s, while a clear gap separates the pair from the rest of the chasing pack.
This guide breaks down the full modern-era ranking, how Ronaldo and Messi compare across club, continental, and international football, and which active players, from Robert Lewandowski to Erling Haaland, have the best shot at climbing the list in the years ahead.
A note on scope: Historical football record books often credit players like Erwin Helmchen, Josef Bican, Ferenc Deák, Pelé, and Romário with more career hat-tricks than Cristiano Ronaldo.
However, many of those totals include regional competitions, wartime football, unofficial matches, or records that cannot be verified to modern statistical standards.
This article focuses primarily on officially documented professional matches from the fully professional era, while also acknowledging those historical record holders later on.
What Is a Hat-Trick in Football?
A football hat-trick happens when one player scores three goals in a single match.
The goals do not need to arrive consecutively, and the term itself comes from 19th-century English cricket, where a bowler taking three wickets on three consecutive deliveries was traditionally presented with a hat.
Football borrowed both the word and the celebratory spirit behind it.
The first internationally recorded instance arrived in 1878, when Scotland’s John McDougall scored three times in a 7-2 win over England.
Since then, hat-tricks have become one of the sport’s most closely tracked individual feats, even as the definition of “official” has shifted depending on who is doing the counting.
Official Hat-Trick
An official hat-trick is one scored in a sanctioned competitive match: a league fixture, a domestic cup tie, a continental club competition, or a full international recognised by FIFA or a regional confederation.
This is the standard used in nearly every modern statistic quoted by clubs, broadcasters, and governing bodies today.
Perfect Hat-Trick
A perfect hat-trick requires three different methods of scoring within the same match: one goal with the left foot, one with the right foot, and one with a header, in any order.
It is rarer than it sounds, since most strikers lean heavily on a dominant foot. Cristiano Ronaldo has reportedly managed it 10 times in his career, a striking number given how few players achieve it even once.
Club vs International Hat-Tricks
Statisticians typically split hat-trick totals into two buckets: club hat-tricks, scored for a domestic or continental side, and international hat-tricks, scored while representing a national team.
Because countries play far fewer matches than clubs across a calendar year, international hat-tricks are rarer and tend to carry extra prestige per goal scored.
Related: Explore our complete guides to the UEFA Champions League Winners List, the UEFA Conference League Winners List, the Ballon d’Or Winners List, and the La Liga Winners List, and league champions from England, Spain, Italy, Germany, and beyond.
Top 25 Players With the Most Hat-Tricks in Football History
This ranking covers players whose entire careers are independently verifiable through club, league, and federation records: full top-flight seasons, continental competition, and official internationals. Friendlies and exhibition matches are excluded throughout, which is the standard most clubs, broadcasters, and statisticians use today.
| Rank | Player | Country | Career Years | Hat-Tricks |
| 1 | Cristiano Ronaldo | Portugal | 2002–present | 66 |
| 2 | Lionel Messi | Argentina | 2003–present | 61 |
| 3 | Robert Lewandowski | Poland | 2006–present | 33 |
| 4 | Luis Suárez | Uruguay | 2005–present | 30 |
| 5 | Harry Kane | England | 2009–present | 24 |
| 6 | Erling Haaland | Norway | 2016–present | 24 |
| 7 | Neymar | Brazil | 2009–present | 21 |
| 8 | Kylian Mbappé | France | 2015–present | 20 |
| 9 | Zlatan Ibrahimović | Sweden | 1999–2023 | 20 |
| 10 | Abderrazak Hamdallah | Morocco | 2010–present | ~20 |
| 11 | Sergio Agüero | Argentina | 2003–2021 | 19 |
| 12 | Karim Benzema | France | 2005–present | ~17 |
| 13 | Mario Gómez | Germany | 2003–2020 | ~16 |
| 14 | Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang | Gabon | 2007–present | ~16 |
| 15 | Edinson Cavani | Uruguay | 2007–present | ~15 |
| 16 | Gonzalo Higuaín | Argentina | 2005–2022 | ~15 |
| 17 | Sadio Mané | Senegal | 2010–present | ~14 |
| 18 | Mohamed Salah | Egypt | 2010–present | ~13 |
| 19 | Ruud van Nistelrooy | Netherlands | 1993–2012 | ~13 |
| 20 | Didier Drogba | Ivory Coast | 1998–2018 | ~12 |
| 21 | Samuel Eto’o | Cameroon | 1997–2019 | ~12 |
| 22 | Andriy Shevchenko | Ukraine | 1994–2012 | ~11 |
| 23 | Alexandre Lacazette | France | 2010–present | ~11 |
| 24 | Vinícius Júnior | Brazil | 2018–present | ~10 |
| 25 | Julián Álvarez | Argentina | 2018–present | ~9 |
A note on accuracy: Hat-trick totals for the long-retired names on this list, particularly those from the 1990s and earlier, are harder to pin down precisely than figures for currently active players, since clubs and leagues did not track the statistic as consistently before the 2000s.
Ranks 12 and below should be read as well-supported estimates rather than exact, audited totals.
Historical Hat-Trick Legends
Step outside the fully professional, fully televised era, and the leaderboard looks completely different.
Several names from earlier decades are credited by football historians with hat-trick totals that dwarf Ronaldo’s 66, sometimes by a factor of two.
They belong in any honest conversation about this record, even though their figures cannot be verified by the same standards used for a modern player’s stat sheet.
Erwin Helmchen
Helmchen spent nearly three decades scoring goals in German regional football, most prolifically for PSV Chemnitz, between the 1920s and 1950s.
Football historians at RSSSF, the record-keeping body that digs deepest into regional archives, credit him with roughly 987 career goals and around 141 hat-tricks.
That figure is built almost entirely on German regional-league matches rather than a single recognised top-flight competition, which is why most modern outlets do not treat it as directly comparable to Ronaldo’s total.
Josef Bican
Bican is widely regarded by RSSSF as the highest goalscorer in football history, with estimates exceeding 800 official goals across Austrian and Czechoslovak football in the 1930s and 1940s.
His hat-trick count has never been compiled with the same rigor as some of his contemporaries, partly because his career straddled two football federations during a period of major political upheaval in Central Europe.
Ferenc Deák
Deák scored 795 official goals according to RSSSF, ranking him among the highest career totals ever recorded.
His hat-trick tally of roughly 97 came almost entirely in Hungarian domestic football during the 1940s and early 1950s, a period when the Hungarian league produced some of the most lopsided scorelines in European football history.
Pelé
Pelé is the only player on this list whose hat-trick total is formally recognised by Guinness World Records, which counts 92 across his club and international career.
A significant share of those came in friendlies and exhibition matches, since Santos toured constantly during his playing days and Pelé never featured in a European top-flight league.
That asterisk does not diminish his legend, but it is a meaningful methodological difference from a player like Ronaldo, whose total excludes friendlies entirely.
Romário
Romário’s 70 hat-tricks, as compiled by RSSSF, include 66 at club level and four for Brazil, spread across Brazilian football, the Dutch Eredivisie, and La Liga.
His overall career goal total is itself disputed depending on whether youth, friendly, and exhibition matches are included, but his instinct for the big match was never in question.
Why the Numbers Disagree
The gap between these names and Ronaldo’s official 66 comes down to methodology, not goalscoring ability.
RSSSF aims for the deepest possible historical coverage, including regional leagues and matches that predate consistent international record-keeping.
Guinness World Records applies its own standard and has historically recognised Pelé, whose total blends top-level club football with a large number of exhibition matches.
Modern club and league statisticians, the source for every figure in the rest of this guide, almost always exclude friendlies entirely and count only league, cup, continental, and full international fixtures.
None of these approaches is wrong. They are simply answering different questions, which is exactly why this record gets reported so inconsistently depending on where you look.
Top 10 Hat-Trick Scorers Explained
Numbers alone do not tell the full story. Here is the context for the ten modern players who most often come up in any serious conversation about football hat-trick records.
Cristiano Ronaldo
Ronaldo’s 66 career hat-tricks make him the most prolific treble-scorer of the fully professional, fully documented era of football.
His tally spans five clubs and the Portuguese national team, and includes eight Champions League hat-tricks and 10 reported perfect hat-tricks.
Roughly 44 percent of his hat-tricks have included at least one penalty, a detail that fuels constant comparison with Messi. His current home, the Saudi Pro League, has added to his total in recent seasons, with six hat-tricks for Al-Nassr.
Lionel Messi
Messi sits just behind Ronaldo on the all-time list, and the gap is shrinking. He scored his first hat-trick at a men’s World Cup against Algeria at the 2026 tournament, becoming, at 38 years and 357 days old, the oldest player ever to do so.
The goals also pulled him level with Miroslav Klose as the all-time top scorer in World Cup history.
Eight of his hat-tricks have come in the Champions League, tying Ronaldo’s record in the competition, and his single greatest hat-trick season came in 2011-12, when he scored eight trebles for Barcelona in one campaign.
Robert Lewandowski
Lewandowski leads all active players outside the Ronaldo-Messi conversation.
He is the only player to score Champions League hat-tricks for three different clubs, and holds a share of the Bundesliga record for most hat-tricks in a single season.
His longevity into his late 30s at Barcelona has kept his tally climbing well past the point most strikers slow down.
Luis Suárez
Suárez built his hat-trick record on relentless movement and finishing variety, scoring trebles in four different top-flight leagues.
His peak years at Liverpool and Barcelona, where he formed a fearsome front line alongside Messi and Neymar, produced the bulk of his tally, and he remains one of the most clinical finishers of his generation.
Harry Kane
Kane built his hat-trick total largely in the Premier League before adding to it rapidly in the Bundesliga, where weaker opposition and a faster-paced league have suited his movement in behind defences.
He is England’s all-time leading scorer, and his Bayern move has kept his goal involvement climbing well into his thirties.
Erling Haaland
Haaland is the fastest riser on this entire list. He reached 24 career hat-tricks at a younger age than almost any player in modern history, including a five-goal Champions League haul against RB Leipzig in 2023.
If his current scoring rate holds even close to its current pace, he is the player most likely to seriously threaten Ronaldo’s record over the next decade.
Neymar
Neymar’s flair-driven game produced hat-tricks across Brazilian football, La Liga, and Ligue 1, including trebles for both Barcelona and PSG in the Champions League.
Injuries have slowed his output in recent seasons, but his career total still ranks among the best of his generation.
Kylian Mbappé
Mbappé is the youngest player on this list and is still climbing fast.
He has scored Champions League hat-tricks for both PSG and Real Madrid, and his six-minute 42-second treble against Olympiacos in late 2025 ranks as the second-fastest in the competition’s history.
He is also one of only two players to score a hat-trick in a men’s World Cup final.
Zlatan Ibrahimović
Ibrahimović’s 20 career hat-tricks came across an unusually long career spanning four major European leagues plus MLS, a testament to his longevity and his combination of size, technique, and self-belief.
Few players have scored top-level hat-tricks in as many different footballing cultures.
Abderrazak Hamdallah
Hamdallah is the least globally recognised name in this group, but his hat-trick tally has quietly overtaken more famous strikers like Ibrahimović.
Most of his treble tally came in the Saudi Pro League and Chinese Super League, where his clinical finishing went somewhat under the radar of mainstream European coverage.
What Counts as an Official Hat-Trick
One detail trips up a lot of casual stat-checking: not every three-goal game counts the same way in every total you might see quoted online.
- League, cup, and continental matches always count toward a player’s official total, and form the bulk of every figure in this guide.
- Full internationals recognised by FIFA or a regional confederation also count, including World Cup qualifiers, continental championships, and FIFA-sanctioned friendlies.
- Unofficial friendlies, exhibition tours, and youth or reserve matches are excluded from the modern standard used by clubs, leagues, and outlets like UEFA.com and Transfermarkt, which is the standard this guide follows throughout.
Sticking to one consistent standard is what keeps a list like this comparable from player to player. Mixing competitive and exhibition matches, even briefly, is the fastest way to make an otherwise reliable ranking misleading.
Players With the Most International Hat-Tricks
International hat-tricks carry extra weight because national teams play far fewer matches per year than clubs, often as few as eight to fifteen fixtures annually.
| Player | Country | International Hat-Tricks |
| Lionel Messi | Argentina | 11 |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | Portugal | 10 |
| Robert Lewandowski | Poland | 6 |
| Harry Kane | England | 5 |
| Erling Haaland | Norway | 4 |
Messi’s tally took on extra significance at the 2026 World Cup, where his hat-trick against Algeria was also his first at a men’s World Cup, lifting him level with Miroslav Klose’s all-time tournament scoring record and breaking Ronaldo’s mark as the oldest player to score a World Cup hat-trick.
Players With the Most Club Hat-Tricks
The vast majority of any modern player’s hat-trick total comes at club level, simply because clubs play far more matches across domestic leagues, cup competitions, and continental tournaments.
Ronaldo’s 66 hat-tricks break down across five different clubs, while Lewandowski’s run across three countries and three Champions League campaigns with different teams.
Domestic cup competitions and one-sided continental group games tend to produce a disproportionate share of career hat-tricks, since weaker opposition and rotated squads create more space in behind for elite finishers.
Cristiano Ronaldo vs Lionel Messi: Hat-Trick Comparison
No rivalry has generated more hat-trick discourse over the past two decades. Here is the breakdown as it stands following Messi’s hat-trick at the 2026 World Cup.
| Category | Cristiano Ronaldo | Lionel Messi |
| Total Career Hat-Tricks | 66 | 61 |
| Club Hat-Tricks | 56 | 50 |
| International Hat-Tricks | 10 | 11 |
| Champions League Hat-Tricks | 8 | 8 |
| Hat-Tricks With a Penalty | 29 (44%) | 14 (23%) |
| Perfect Hat-Tricks | 10 | 0 |
Ronaldo holds the overall lead and the edge in perfect hat-tricks, reflecting his rare combination of finishing with both feet and his head.
Messi’s international tally now edges ahead following his 2026 World Cup treble, and his hat-tricks lean more heavily on open-play creativity, with a noticeably lower share including penalties.
Both share the Champions League hat-trick record at eight apiece, a tie that has stood for several seasons despite Ronaldo’s heavier minutes in the competition during his prime years.
Kylian Mbappé vs Erling Haaland: The Next Hat-Trick Rivalry
Ronaldo and Messi spent two decades trading hat-trick records, and football already has its successors lined up.
Mbappé and Haaland are the two most realistic long-term threats to the all-time mark, and they are reaching career milestones faster than either Ronaldo or Messi did at the same age.
| Category | Kylian Mbappé | Erling Haaland |
| Age | 27 | 25 |
| Career Hat-Tricks | 20+ | 24 |
| Champions League Hat-Tricks | 5 | 3 |
| Clubs With a Hat-Trick | 3 (Monaco, PSG, Real Madrid) | 2 (Dortmund, Man City) |
| Fastest Career Hat-Trick | 6m 42s (UCL) | ~9 mins (UCL) |
| Best Single-Match Haul | 4 goals | 5 goals (vs RB Leipzig, 2023) |
Haaland is younger, has more hat-tricks already banked, and owns the better single-match ceiling, having scored five in one Champions League match before turning 23.
Mbappé counters with more variety: hat-tricks for three different clubs, a World Cup final treble that Haaland has never had the chance to chase, and the speed record between the two.
Neither has Ronaldo’s longevity yet, and that is the real question mark.
Ronaldo’s 66 was built over more than two decades; Mbappé and Haaland are both still short of their physical peak, which means the gap could close significantly within the next five to seven seasons if either stays healthy and keeps scoring at his current rate.
Of the two, Haaland’s hat-trick rate per appearance is the most statistically extreme of any player in this guide, modern or historical.
If that rate holds even at a reduced pace into his 30s, he has a stronger mathematical path to Ronaldo’s record than Mbappé does, though Mbappé’s broader trophy haul and World Cup pedigree keep him firmly in the conversation.
Hat-Tricks by Competition
A single career total only tells part of the story. Breaking it down league by league shows where each player actually built their record, and which competitions tend to produce the most three-goal games in the first place.
FIFA World Cup
World Cup hat-tricks are rare by design, since the tournament only comes around every four years and matches against weaker opposition are limited.
Lionel Messi’s treble against Algeria at the 2026 tournament was his first at a men’s World Cup, lifting him level with Miroslav Klose’s all-time tournament scoring record.
Historically, players like Just Fontaine and Gerd Müller scored multiple World Cup hat-tricks across their careers, a feat that remains exceptionally difficult under the tournament’s modern, more defensively organised format.
UEFA Champions League
Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are tied for the most Champions League hat-tricks in the competition’s history with eight apiece.
Robert Lewandowski sits next with six, the only player to register Champions League trebles for three different clubs.
The competition’s group-stage format, which regularly pits elite attackers against weaker continental opposition, has made it one of the most productive hat-trick environments in modern football.
Premier League
Alan Shearer and Sergio Agüero lead the chart among Premier League-era forwards, with both men regularly punishing struggling sides during the competition’s long 38-game season.
The Premier League’s high broadcast volume also means its hat-tricks, including Sadio Mané’s record-breaking 2 minute 56 second treble in 2015, are some of the most thoroughly documented in the sport.
La Liga
Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo dominate the modern La Liga hat-trick chart, a direct result of their overlapping decade at Barcelona and Real Madrid.
Messi’s first career hat-trick came in an El Clásico against Real Madrid at just 19 years old, a fitting start to a rivalry that would go on to define the competition for the next ten years.
Serie A
Cristiano Ronaldo added several hat-tricks to his total during his three-year spell at Juventus, helping carry a side that was transitioning between eras domestically while still competing for Champions League knockout rounds.
Bundesliga
Robert Lewandowski holds a share of the Bundesliga’s single-season hat-trick record, built during his peak scoring years at Bayern Munich.
Harry Kane has added to the league’s modern hat-trick count since joining Bayern, taking advantage of a competition that, like the Saudi Pro League, often produces lopsided scorelines against mid-table opposition.
Ligue 1
Kylian Mbappé is the standout modern hat-trick scorer in Ligue 1, racking up trebles for both Monaco and Paris Saint-Germain before his move to Real Madrid. His pace and direct running style proved especially difficult for Ligue 1 defences built to contain slower, more physical strikers.
Saudi Pro League
Since joining Al-Nassr in 2023, Cristiano Ronaldo has scored six hat-tricks in the Saudi Pro League, including an eight-goal demolition of Al Wehda and a hat-trick scored entirely from outside the box, two free kicks and one open-play strike, against Abha.
The league’s growing depth of attacking talent and uneven squad quality across clubs has made it fertile ground for late-career hat-tricks from Ronaldo and other marquee signings.
MLS
Lionel Messi has added hat-tricks for Inter Miami since arriving in MLS in 2023, including a substitute treble against New England Revolution in 2024 after coming off the bench.
MLS has occasionally proven stricter than other leagues on goal-attribution decisions affecting hat-trick counts, a reminder that even modern, well-documented competitions can disagree at the margins.
Fastest Hat-Tricks in Football History
Speed records sit in their own category, separate from career totals. Mohamed Salah holds the fastest verified Champions League hat-trick, scoring three times for Liverpool against Rangers in just 6 minutes and 12 seconds in 2022.
Kylian Mbappé’s 6 minute 42 second treble against Olympiacos in 2025 ranks as the second fastest in the competition’s history.
At the domestic level, Sadio Mané’s 2-minute 56-second hat-trick for Southampton against Aston Villa in 2015 remains the fastest in Premier League history, a record that has stood for over a decade despite the league’s increasing goal-scoring rates.
What Is a Perfect Hat-Trick?
A perfect hat-trick requires a player to score with their left foot, their right foot, and their head, all in the same match, in any order.
It demonstrates a level of all-around finishing ability that very few players possess, since most elite strikers still favor one foot heavily even at the highest level.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s reported tally of 10 perfect hat-tricks stands out partly because of his famously strong heading ability for a player his size, combined with genuine two-footed comfort in front of goal.
Messi, by contrast, has scored only a handful of career headers, which is the main reason he has not registered a perfect hat-trick despite his overall tally.
Active Players With the Most Hat-Tricks
| Player | Career Hat-Tricks | Trajectory |
| Cristiano Ronaldo | 66 | Still adding hat-tricks in the Saudi Pro League and for Portugal in his late 30s |
| Lionel Messi | 61 | Closed the gap further with his 2026 World Cup hat-trick at age 38 |
| Robert Lewandowski | 33 | Continuing to score regularly at Barcelona into his late 30s |
| Harry Kane | 24 | Prolific at Bayern Munich, with years of peak scoring likely remaining |
| Erling Haaland | 24 | The fastest riser on this list, with the highest hat-trick rate per appearance of anyone here |
| Kylian Mbappé | 20 | Still in his mid-20s with a realistic shot at the all-time top three over the next decade |
Haaland’s trajectory is the one worth watching most closely. He reached 24 hat-tricks faster than almost any player in modern history, and if his scoring rate holds anywhere close to current form, he could realistically threaten Ronaldo’s modern-era record before the end of the decade.
Interesting Hat-Trick Facts
- Most Champions League hat-tricks: Ronaldo and Messi share the record at 8 apiece, with Lewandowski next on 6.
- Fastest Champions League hat-trick: Mohamed Salah, 6 minutes 12 seconds, for Liverpool against Rangers in 2022.
- Fastest Premier League hat-trick: Sadio Mané, 2 minutes 56 seconds, for Southampton against Aston Villa in 2015.
- Oldest World Cup hat-trick scorer: Lionel Messi, at 38 years and 357 days, against Algeria at the 2026 World Cup.
- Most hat-tricks in a single season: Lionel Messi scored eight in 2011-12 for Barcelona, the same season he set the calendar-year goals record.
- Only player to score hat-tricks for three different Champions League clubs: Robert Lewandowski, for Dortmund, Bayern Munich, and Barcelona.
- Fastest riser: Erling Haaland reached 24 career hat-tricks faster than any of his contemporaries, including a 5-goal Champions League game against RB Leipzig.
The Final Word on Football’s Hat-Trick Record
Among players whose entire careers sit inside the fully professional, fully documented modern game, the answer to who holds the record for the player with most hat-tricks in football history is Cristiano Ronaldo, with 66.
Lionel Messi trails by just five, and at 38 years old he is still adding to his total, most recently at the 2026 World Cup.
No other active player is realistically within touching distance of either man, though Robert Lewandowski, Harry Kane, and a fast-rising Erling Haaland round out a genuinely strong group behind them.
What makes this race worth following closely is the generational overlap. Ronaldo and Messi have spent two decades trading hat-trick records back and forth, while Haaland and Mbappé are already racking up tallies at a younger age than either man managed at the same point in their careers.
Whoever ultimately threatens Ronaldo’s mark will do it in front of more cameras, more statisticians, and more scrutiny than any hat-trick scorer in history.
For now, the record belongs to Ronaldo. But with Messi still scoring at 38 and a new generation closing the gap from below, this is one football record that is genuinely live, not settled.
