Cristiano Ronaldo: 140 Goals
Cristiano Ronaldo is the all-time leading scorer in the UEFA Champions League with 140 goals in 183 appearances.
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 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: 105 Goals
Robert Lewandowski reached his century of UEFA Champions League goals on 26 November, scoring for Barcelona against French club Brest.
Of his 105 UCL goals, 69 came at Bayern Munich after he arrived from Borussia Dortmund. With 11 goals in 2024-25, he’s taken his total UCL goal tally for Barcelona to 20. 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 in June 2023, Karim Benzema looks very unlikely to add to his tally of 90 UEFA Champions League goals.
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
Kylian Mbappé: 64 Goals
Kylian Mbappé reached 50 UEFA Champions League goals in Real Madrid’s meeting with Atalanta on 10 December 2024.
Aged just 25 years and 356 days old when doing it, he became the second youngest player to reach the landmark after Lionel Messi, who was 24 years and 284 days old when he hit the 50-goal landmark for Barcelona back in April 2012 versus Milan.
By reaching the half-century inside 79 games, Mbappé also became the fourth quickest to the UCL landmark, surpassed by only Ruud van Nistelrooy (62 appearances) and Lionel Messi (66) and Robert Lewandowski (77) in the rankings.