Lionel Messi Becomes World Cup's All-Time Top Scorer

Lionel Messi set a new World Cup scoring record at the 2026 tournament, reaching 17 career goals in World Cup play after scoring against Austria. The Argentina captain, the reigning world champion, surpassed Germany’s Miroslav Klose and now stands alone at the top of the all-time list, with at least two matches still left in the tournament.

This is Messi’s sixth World Cup. He scored his first World Cup goal on June 16, 2006, in Argentina’s 6-0 win over Bosnia and Herzegovina, when he was 18 and still an emerging talent. He did not score at the 2010 World Cup, then waited eight more years for his next goal, again against Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2014.

That 2014 tournament also brought three more goals, against Iran and Nigeria, though he failed to score in the knockout rounds. In 2018, he found the net again against Nigeria, but it was his only goal of the competition. His World Cup legacy changed dramatically in Qatar in 2022, where he scored against Saudi Arabia, then against Mexico, and later registered his first knockout-stage goals at a World Cup, against Australia in the round of 16, the Netherlands in the quarterfinals, Croatia in the semifinals, and two goals against France in the final.

In the current tournament, Messi opened with the first World Cup hat trick of his career, which took him to 16 goals before his record-breaking strike against Austria. The article also notes that Kylian Mbappé, who scored twice against Senegal to reach 14 World Cup goals, could still challenge the record this tournament, since he has at least two more matches now and likely at least one more World Cup ahead in his career.