LaLiga Trophies and Awards Explained: Pichichi, Zamora, Zarra and More

Every LaLiga season ends with one champion, but the story of the season lives in the individual prizes too. The race for the top scorer trophy can run to the final matchday. The race for the best goalkeeper prize can turn on a single clean sheet. These trophies add a second contest inside the main contest.

This guide explains the LaLiga trophies and awards in plain terms. It covers the league title, the Pichichi Trophy for the top scorer, the Zamora Trophy for the best goalkeeper, the Zarra Trophy for the top Spanish scorer, the Di Stefano Trophy for the best overall player, and the monthly awards for the best player, the best coach, and the best goal.

The league trophy

The main prize in Spanish football is the LaLiga title. Twenty clubs play 38 matches each across a season from August to May. The club with the most points at the end of the season is crowned champion. There is no playoff for the title. The table after 38 matchdays is final.

The title list shows how hard the trophy is to win. At the end of the 2024-25 season, only nine clubs had won LaLiga since 1929. Real Madrid led the list with 36 titles, followed by Barcelona with 28 and Atletico Madrid with 11.

Pichichi Trophy for the top scorer

The Pichichi Trophy goes to the top scorer in LaLiga each season. The trophy is named after former Athletic Bilbao forward Rafael Moreno Aranzadi, known as Pichichi. The award was first given during the 1952-53 season, and former Athletic Bilbao forward Telmo Zarra won the inaugural award with 24 goals in 29 matches. The award is given by the Spanish sports newspaper Marca.

The record list for the Pichichi Trophy reads like a history of great strikers. Lionel Messi won the trophy eight times, the most in the history of the league. His wins came in 2009-10, 2011-12, 2012-13, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21. The last five wins came in a row. In 2020-21, Messi scored 30 goals in 35 games for Barcelona, ahead of Karim Benzema and Gerard Moreno, who had 23 each. Messi is also the all time highest goalscorer in LaLiga history, with 474 goals in 520 league appearances between 2004 and 2021.

Behind Messi, Telmo Zarra won the Pichichi Trophy six times, and was also the first recipient of the award. Former Real Madrid star Cristiano Ronaldo won it three times, in 2010-11, 2013-14, and 2014-15. The Pichichi race rewards pure scoring, and a striker on a mid table club can win it.

Zamora Trophy for the best goalkeeper

The Zamora Trophy goes to the goalkeeper with the fewest goals allowed per game. The award is named after legendary Spanish goalkeeper Ricardo Zamora. To qualify, a goalkeeper must play a minimum of 28 games in the league season. The winner is decided by ratio, not by total clean sheets, so a goalkeeper who plays fewer games cannot win on a short hot streak.

The Zamora Trophy rewards the goalkeeper and the defence as a unit. At Barcelona, Antoni Ramallets and Victor Valdes each won the prize five times. Valdes won it four times in a row, a record shared with Jan Oblak of Atletico Madrid. Marc-Andre ter Stegen won a first Zamora Trophy for Barcelona in the 2022-23 season. In that same season, Robert Lewandowski won the Pichichi Trophy for Barcelona.

Zarra Trophy for the top Spanish scorer

The Zarra Trophy goes to the top scorer among Spanish domestic players in LaLiga. The trophy is named after Telmo Zarra, the Athletic Bilbao striker who won the Pichichi Trophy six times and held the league scoring record for decades. The Zarra Trophy gives Spanish strikers a prize of their own, even in a season when a foreign striker wins the Pichichi Trophy.

The Zarra race often runs close to the end of the season, because several Spanish strikers can sit within a few goals of each other. For Spanish forwards, the trophy marks a season as a breakthrough.

Di Stefano Trophy for the best overall player

The Alfredo Di Stefano Trophy goes to the player judged to be the best overall player in the division. The award is named after Alfredo Di Stefano, the Real Madrid legend who led the club to five straight European Champion Clubs Cups between 1956 and 1960. The Di Stefano Trophy is not a scoring prize. It rewards the player who shaped the season most, across goals, creativity, leadership, and big match impact.

Marc-Andre ter Stegen won the Di Stefano Player of the Season Award for the 2022-23 season, a rare win for a goalkeeper. In his acceptance remarks, he pointed to the way the team as a whole worked, and to the way the defence worked as a unit. That win showed how the Di Stefano Trophy can honour a player at any position, not only a striker. A goalkeeper, a midfielder, or a defender can win it if the season belongs to that player.

Monthly awards and league awards

LaLiga also hands out monthly awards during the season. Since the 2013-14 season, the league has bestowed monthly manager of the month and player of the month awards. The Player of the Month award is decided by a final vote on the official LaLiga website, with nominees from across the league. The monthly cycle also includes Coach of the Month and Goal of the Month honours.

The monthly awards capture form in a way that season awards cannot. In September of the 2026-27 season, Raphinha won the Player of the Month award after seven goals and two assists in four league games, including two consecutive hat tricks. Hansi Flick won Coach of the Month in the same month, and Joao Cancelo won Goal of the Month.

LaLiga had no official individual awards until the 2008-09 season. In that season, the governing body created the LFP Awards, now called the LaLiga Awards, for individual players and coaches. The majority of those awards were discontinued after the 2015-16 season. The Marca awards, including the Pichichi, Zamora, Di Stefano, and Zarra trophies, are not sanctioned by the league or by the federation, and are therefore not regarded as official.

Award	For	Key rule
LaLiga title	Champion club	Most points after 38 matches
Pichichi Trophy	Top scorer	Most league goals in the season
Zamora Trophy	Best goalkeeper	Lowest goals conceded per game, minimum 28 games
Zarra Trophy	Top Spanish scorer	Most league goals by a Spanish player
Di Stefano Trophy	Best overall player	Judged best player in the division
Player of the Month	Best player in a month	Final vote on the official LaLiga website
Coach of the Month	Best coach in a month	Monthly league award
Goal of the Month	Best goal in a month	Monthly league award

The table above gives a quick guide to the main prizes. The league title rewards the best club. The Pichichi, Zamora, Zarra, and Di Stefano trophies reward the best scorer, the best goalkeeper, the best Spanish scorer, and the best overall player. The monthly awards reward the best form in a single month.

Who won the Pichichi Trophy in recent seasons? The latest winners in full

The most recent name on the Pichichi list is a familiar one. Kylian Mbappe won the trophy again in 2025-26, scoring 25 goals for Real Madrid to finish two goals clear of Mallorca striker Vedat Muriqi. It was the second Pichichi of Mbappe in a row, after 31 goals in 2024-25, and Marca noted that he became the 18th player in league history to finish as the top scorer of the division more than once.

The two seasons before the double of Mbappe show how open the race has become. In 2023-24, Artem Dovbyk won the trophy with Girona, scoring 24 goals in 36 games. His contest with Alexander Sorloth ran to the final matchday, when a hat-trick against Granada settled it. In 2022-23, Robert Lewandowski topped the chart in his first season in Spain, scoring 23 goals for Barcelona.

Karim Benzema won the trophy in 2021-22, in a season when Real Madrid also took the league title. His win ended a long run of dominance: from 2009-10 to 2020-21, every Pichichi went to Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Luis Suarez. Benzema was the first player outside that trio to top the scoring chart in 12 seasons.

The recent winners are listed in the table below. The striking detail is the winning totals: after the extraordinary scoring years of the Messi and Ronaldo era, the trophy is now usually won with a tally in the twenties, and the race tends to stay open until the final weeks of the season.

Season	Winner	Club	Goals
2022-23	Robert Lewandowski	Barcelona	23
2023-24	Artem Dovbyk	Girona	24
2024-25	Kylian Mbappe	Real Madrid	31
2025-26	Kylian Mbappe	Real Madrid	25

The record winning tally still belongs to those duopoly years. Messi scored 50 goals in 2011-12, the highest total ever recorded by a Pichichi winner, ahead of the 48 of Cristiano Ronaldo in 2014-15. Luis Suarez reached 40 in 2015-16, but no winner since then has come close to those numbers.

Who has won the most Pichichi Trophies? The record holders

The eight wins of Messi, covered earlier in this guide, stand clear at the top of the list. Behind him, the six wins of Telmo Zarra came in the years either side of the official launch of the trophy in 1952-53. Three players share third place with five wins each: Alfredo Di Stefano, Quini and Hugo Sanchez. The five of Di Stefano all came with Real Madrid in the 1950s, the last of them in 1958-59.

The five wins of Quini were split between two clubs: three with Sporting Gijon and two with Barcelona, between 1974 and 1982. Hugo Sanchez won his first with Atletico Madrid in 1984-85 and then four more with Real Madrid. Ferenc Puskas won four times around the turn of the 1960s, and Cristiano Ronaldo won three, as this guide explained above.

The honours list of Marca also reaches back to 1928-29, the first season of the league, when Paco Bienzobas of Real Sociedad finished as top scorer with 14 goals. The trophy itself was not created until 1952-53, so the earliest names on the list are the recorded top scorers of their seasons rather than trophy winners in the modern sense. You can follow how the league itself grew across those years in our complete history of LaLiga.

The six wins of Zarra came with heavy scoring: 19 goals in 1944-45, 24 in 1945-46, 34 in 1946-47, 35 in 1949-50, a personal best of 38 in 1950-51 and 24 again in 1952-53, the season the trophy was formally created. His 38-goal campaign remained one of the defining scoring seasons of the post-war years.

Who has won the most Zamora Trophies? Oblak and the goalkeeping greats

The Zamora record now belongs to one man. Jan Oblak of Atletico Madrid has won the trophy six times: in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2020-21 and 2024-25. His first win came with a ratio of 0.47 goals conceded per game, 18 goals in 38 matches, and his four wins in a row between 2016 and 2019 matched the streak Victor Valdes set at Barcelona.

The six wins of Oblak moved him past Antoni Ramallets and Victor Valdes, who won five each. Behind that pair, the recent winners show the prize moving around the biggest clubs of Spain: Yassine Bounou, known as Bono, won it with Sevilla in 2021-22, Marc-Andre ter Stegen won it with Barcelona in 2022-23, and Unai Simon won it with Athletic Club in 2023-24.

The win of Simon ended a long wait. He was the first Athletic Club goalkeeper to take the Zamora since the great Jose Angel Iribar in 1970, a gap of 54 years, and he kept 18 clean sheets across the season. In 2025-26 the trophy went to Joan Garcia of RCD Espanyol.

The Zamora list also shows why the trophy carries its name. Ricardo Zamora himself finished as the least beaten goalkeeper of the league in its first season, 1928-29, with Espanyol, and again in 1931-32 and 1932-33 with Real Madrid, two decades before Marca created the trophy in his honour in 1958-59.

The numbers behind recent wins show how closely the trophy can be contested. The 2022-23 win of Marc-Andre ter Stegen came at 0.49 goals conceded per game, 18 goals in 37 matches, and Unai Simon won a year later at 0.91. The sixth win of Oblak, in 2024-25, came at 0.83, with 30 goals conceded in 36 games.

When was the Zarra Trophy created? The top scorer prize of Spain in detail

The Zarra Trophy is the youngest of the Marca prizes in this guide. Marca created it for the 2005-06 season, and the first winner set the standard: David Villa won it four times, in 2005-06, 2006-07, 2008-09 and 2009-10, all of them with Valencia.

Iago Aspas matched the record of Villa in 2021-22, when he collected his fourth Zarra with Celta Vigo. That season ended in a tie: Aspas and Raul de Tomas of Espanyol each scored 17 goals and shared the trophy. A shared Zarra happened again in 2023-24, when Borja Mayoral of Getafe and Alvaro Morata of Atletico Madrid finished level on 15 goals.

In 2024-25, Ayoze Perez won the Zarra for the first time, scoring 19 league goals for Villarreal. A season later the trophy produced another first: Lamine Yamal and Ferran Torres, both of Barcelona, finished level on 16 goals and shared the award, the first time two players from the same club had split the Zarra.

Who won the Di Stefano Trophy in recent seasons? The best player award

The Di Stefano Trophy follows the rhythm of the Premios Marca gala, held each autumn for the season just finished. The recent winners show the award spreading across the stars of the league: Marc-Andre ter Stegen for 2022-23, Jude Bellingham of Real Madrid for 2023-24, and Lamine Yamal of Barcelona for 2024-25, who received the award in November 2025.

The award began with the 2007-08 season, when Raul Gonzalez, the Real Madrid captain, won the first edition in a jury vote ahead of Sergio Aguero and Iker Casillas. That first result set the pattern the trophy still follows: it can go to any position, and it rewards the player judged to have defined the season, not simply the one with the most goals. How the league season those players defined is structured is covered in our guide to how LaLiga works.

LaLiga trophies and awards in 2026-27: the races to follow

The 2026-27 season gives every race in this guide a fresh start. Barcelona begin as defending champions after winning their 29th league title in May 2026, and you can see where that win leaves the all-time standings in our LaLiga winners list. Kylian Mbappe starts the season as the man to beat in the Pichichi race, after back-to-back wins for Real Madrid.

The early monthly awards have already pointed to the first form players of the season. As this guide noted above, Raphinha took the September Player of the Month award, Hansi Flick was named Coach of the Month, and Joao Cancelo won Goal of the Month. The monthly cycle matters because it rewards the players shaping the season as it happens, long before the big trophies are settled in May.

There is also a new storyline in the coaching race. Jose Mourinho returned to Real Madrid in June 2026, appointed on a three-year deal, and his monthly contests with Flick and the rest of the coaches of the league will run alongside the battles on the pitch. By the spring, the same questions will return: who scores most, who concedes fewest, and who defines the season.

The promoted clubs add fresh names to the races as well. Racing Santander, Deportivo La Coruna and Malaga return to the top flight this season, and while a player from a newly promoted side rarely wins a major award, their goalkeepers and forwards will join the Zamora and scoring charts from the first matchday.

Conclusion

LaLiga trophies and awards work as a set. The league title crowns the best club. The Pichichi Trophy crowns the best scorer. The Zamora Trophy crowns the best goalkeeper. The Zarra Trophy crowns the best Spanish scorer. The Di Stefano Trophy crowns the best overall player. The monthly awards crown the best form in a single month.