Harry Kane’s second goal for Bayern Munich against Werder Bremen on Saturday was the 500th of his career for club and country, a remarkable achievement that makes him the first Englishman to reach the milestone in official games.
It took the forward just over 15 years to get there, with his first strike coming for Leyton Orient against Sheffield Wednesday in League One in January 2011 at 17 years old.
15 years ago today…
A young striker called Harry Kane scored his first goal in professional football for the O’s. I wonder where he is now? #LOFC #OneOrient pic.twitter.com/bPLk51HO1x
— Leyton Orient FC (@leytonorientfc) January 22, 2026
In this period, he has finished as the top scorer in the World Cup, the Premier League (three times), the Bundesliga (twice, and soon to be three times), the Champions League (joint-top in 2023-24) and the European Championship (joint-top at Euro 2024).
Oh, and he has also scored the most goals in the history of Tottenham Hotspur and the England national team.
Here, The Athletic charts Kane’s path to 500 and provides a detailed breakdown of a goalscoring career that, for sheer numbers, is superior to anyone else’s from the country that invented the world’s most popular sport.
This is how many goals Kane, 32, has scored for each of the teams he has represented — with his 280 for Tottenham breaking Jimmy Greaves’ club record that had stood since 1970 and the 78 for England eclipsing Wayne Rooney’s previous-best mark, with the last of the former captain’s 53 goals coming at Euro 2016.
He won’t break the Bayern record, though, as Gerd Muller scored 566 times for the German giants from 1964 to 1978 (he left in 1979). Kane is, however, six goals away from entering the club’s all-time top 10 scorers.
Here are Kane’s 500 goals broken down by season, with the 52 he hit for club and country in 2017-18 and 2023-24 representing his highest in a campaign.
Given he is already on 46 this season and with his club still challenging on three fronts — and a World Cup to come — it is highly likely that he will get more than 52 in 2025-26.
Forty-one of those goals in 2017-18 came for Tottenham, making Kane the first player to score 40-plus in a season for the club since Clive Allen’s 49 in 1986-87. The other 11 came for his country, with six of them at the World Cup in Russia, where Kane became the second Englishman to win the tournament’s Golden Boot after Gary Lineker in 1986.
In club football alone, Kane’s best return in a campaign is the 44 goals he netted in his first season at Bayern in 2023-24. But again, he will very likely beat that tally this season, too, having netted 41 times for the German side in 2025-26.
Kane has scored in every competition he has played in, though it is worth noting he failed to find the net in his two games in the Championship play-offs for Leicester City in the 2012-13 season.
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Kane’s Premier League haul is bettered only by Alan Shearer’s 260, but when it comes to the entire history of the English top flight (1888-89 onwards) 18 players have scored more than him. He is, however, the highest scorer in the country’s top division in the 21st century.
As for Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain), Kane’s total of 301 is the ninth-highest overall figure across these divisions. He could well finish his career with just Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo ahead of him on this particular list.
Kane is comfortably the highest-scoring Englishman in the European Cup/Champions League, with his 48 goals now 18 more than next-best Rooney’s total.
As for performances on the biggest stages for the England team, Kane’s 15 goals in major tournaments (World Cup and European Championship) is five more than second-placed Lineker’s 10.
As the chart shows, all 10 of Lineker’s came at the World Cup — meaning that if Kane can score three at the tournament in North America this summer, he will become England’s outright top scorer in the sport’s biggest competition.
As for other Europeans, only Ronaldo (22), Miroslav Klose (19), the aforementioned Muller (18) and Jurgen Klinsmann (16) have netted more at major international tournaments than the England captain.
Leicester, where Kane had a loan spell in 2013, are the side he has scored against the most in his career (20 goals). Overall, he has reached double figures against 12 sides, all English clubs apart from German outfit Stuttgart.
Albania are the country he has netted against the most often, with seven goals.
In total, Kane has scored against 135 teams (for club and country), with Benfica, Iceland and Spain the sides he has appeared against the most often without finding the net. Two of his lowest moments in an England shirt came against the latter sides — the humiliating Euro 2016 exit at the hands of Iceland and defeat in the final of the same competition eight years later by Spain.
In total, there are seven teams Kane has played against more than twice and never scored against.
Intriguingly, Benfica are also the club side Ronaldo has played the most without ever scoring against (five games).
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Kane has scored 29 hat-tricks in his career, with the first coming against Greek club Asteras Tripolis in the Europa League in October 2014 — a game in which he finished up playing in goal. Thirteen of the hat-tricks have been for Tottenham, 11 for Bayern and five for England.
As you can see, Kane has scored four in a game on three occasions, most recently for Bayern against Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League in September 2024. Three of the goals that night were penalties, the only time in the history of the continent’s premier club competition (including the European Cup era) that a player has scored a hat-trick of spot kicks in a game.
In total, he has scored 100 penalties in his career (excluding shootouts), meaning 20 per cent of his 500 goals have come from the spot.
Kane has missed just 13 penalties in his career (including one on his Tottenham debut), an impressive conversion rate of 88.5 per cent, which is superior to the two most prolific goalscorers this century: Ronaldo (83.8) and Messi (77.8).
These 100 penalties make up a decent chunk of the 449 goals Kane has scored from inside the box, with 51 being scored outside the penalty area.
Of the 500, Kane has scored 318 with his right foot, 86 with his left foot, 94 with his head, one with his shoulder and another with his left arm. The shoulder goal, originally awarded to Christian Eriksen before being given to Kane four days later following a successful appeal, came against Stoke City in April 2018 and the one with his left arm came at Brighton & Hove Albion in October 2022.
Son Heung-min delivered the assist for that goal against Brighton, one of 28 times he set up Kane at Tottenham. Unsurprisingly, the South Korean is the player who has provided the most assists for the Englishman’s 500 goals.
So, where do Kane’s 500 goals see him stack up globally in the sport’s history? And by what criteria is he the first Englishman to reach the milestone?
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First, it is worth noting that there is not, and never will be, a complete record of every match that has taken place and all the relevant goalscorers. Furthermore, the status of many games across the world over the more than 150 years competitive football has been played (ie, whether they were official matches) remains disputed or unknown.
Regional leagues, wartime matches, club friendlies… all of these complicate the picture when it comes to establishing the highest goal scorers in official, top-level football.
So, although there is no fixed definition of ‘official, top-level football’, when it comes to the club game, the ‘official’ part is generally taken to mean matches in all competitions in a team’s season (so excluding pre-season games and club friendlies) and ‘top level’ excludes games played for sides who operate outside of a country’s primary league structure.
As for the international game, all matches against other FIFA-recognised nations (including friendlies) meet the standard, unless explicitly stated by the sport’s governing body or a country’s football association.
So, according to the International Federation of Football History & Statistics (IFFHS) — a highly reputable and trusted source on the history of the game — Kane is the 27th man to score 500 goals in official games at the top level of football.
Of the 27, six are still playing: Ronaldo, Messi, Robert Lewandowski, Luis Suarez, Karim Benzema and Kane.
None of the other 26 men, however, is English. So while several greats from the country, such as Steve Bloomer, Dixie Dean and Jimmy Greaves, did reach 500 at all levels of the game combined, they did not do so in official matches at a requisite standard.
Kane needs another 126 goals to break into the IFFHS’ top 10 and, given his current sublime form and ultra-professional approach to his craft, this is more than achievable.
He’s come a long way from the close-range finish for Leyton Orient more than 15 years ago that opened his goalscoring account and, happily, we haven’t seen the last of them yet. Not by a long way.