Some sources place Real Madrid’s annual wage budget at a little under £300m a year. Others, such as the typically reliable Capology.com estimate it to be £268m plus change.
Whatever the true figure, what is not in doubt is that Los Blancos have the highest wage-bill in European football.
For a short while that wasn’t the case, not when PSG were furnished with the lavishly paid Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian Mbappe as their fantasy front-three. It is telling that Real have reclaimed top billing since Mbappe switched to Spain.
Elsewhere, an average annual expenditure of £10.7m per player ensures that this grand footballing institution retains the very best talent and continues to chase down domestic and continental honours each and every season.
Biggest Earners at Real Madrid (2025/26):
- Kylian Mbappe - £527,794 per week
- David Alaba - £380,000 per week
- Vinicius Jr - £351,806 per week
- Jude Bellingham - £351,806 per week
- Rodrygo, Federico Valverde and Trent Alexander-Arnold - £281,657 per week
Before we highlight the five biggest earners at the Bernabeu there is a quirk to highlight.
The three players who are joint-fifth on this list – Rodrygo, Valverde and Alexander-Arnold – are in weekly receipt of exactly the same sum, to the penny, of the Barcelona trio of Marc-Andre ter Stegen, Raphinha, and Lamine Yamal.
A tax consideration, exclusive to Spain, presumably explains this.
Kylian Mbappe
Real’s coveting of Mbappe persisted for seven years, never wavering in their strong desire to bring the French megastar to the Bernabeu. In the summer of 2024 they finally got him, the striker having run down his exorbitant contract in Paris.
That contract however presented a huge problem for Los Blancos. How, after all, do you improve on a sky-high wage that amounted to £63.5m a year?
The answer lay in an eye-watering £128m signing-on bonus, to be paid over the duration of his five-year deal.
Other bonuses meanwhile for the World Cup winner – on meeting goal-scoring thresholds and winning trophies – amount to £35.6m a year.
The Spanish giant secured their dream target just one month after claiming a 15th European Cup/Champions League honour while domestically they had justified their favourites tag in the football betting by winning a 36th league title.
We can expect more silverware to come with the most feared forward in world football leading their charge.
David Alaba
Like Mbappe, the versatile and brilliant Alaba joined on a ‘free’, thereby bumping up his salary considerably.
The three-time UEFA Team of the Year inductee arrived in 2021 having won everything possible many times over with Bayern Munich, including two Champions League medals and a remarkable ten league title triumphs.
At Real, he has played a major role in two further Champions League honours as well as a brace of La Liga wins.
The Austrian’s trophy cabinet is presumably illuminated by floodlights. Now 33, and in the final year of his contract, it is believed that Alaba will depart next May though a short-term deal on reduced terms remains a possibility.
Vinicius Jr
The Brazilian’s seven years in Madrid has seen his reputation take a steady upward trajectory and the same can be said of his wages.
In 2018, precocious but still raw, he was on £5.9m a year, a fortune of course, but a figure that placed him low down in the Real pecking order.
That wage remained static for four seasons until his contract was seriously revised in 2022, and for the player the timing could not have been better.
Not only was he now an established first-team star, bagging 20-plus goals a season and featuring regularly for his country, but just a month earlier ‘Vini’ had scored Real’s only goal as they triumphed in yet another Champions League final.
A sharp 208% rise reflected his standing at Madrid, as well as his elite stature globally. Two years later, the explosive winger finished runner-up in the Ballon d’Or reckoning.
Jude Bellingham
Lionising Zinedine Zidane when growing up, Bellingham wasn’t going to miss out on the opportunity to replicate his idol’s impact and achievements in the Spanish capital.
Ultimately that proved to be a trump card for Real in 2023 as they vied for the signature of the hottest property in world football, amidst strong competition from Manchester City and Liverpool.
Naturally, the club’s trophy-winning pedigree was also a big factor, Los Blancos routinely priced up as favourites in the sports betting to win every tournament they enter. A pay package totalling £18.2m a year before bonuses helped their cause too.
In reality though, both City and Liverpool could match the pedigree and financial incentives. It was the Zizou factor that swung it.
Rodrygo, Federico Valverde and Trent Alexander-Arnold
Very different circumstances have brought these three players to the same rung on Real’s pay ladder.
Valverde is the club’s mainstay and heartbeat, a midfielder who arrived from Penarol in Uruguay in 2016 and has gone on to tick them over 223 times since. He started out on £300,000 a year. That equates to a mere tenth of his bonuses alone a decade on.
As for Rodrygo, he was signed as Brazil’s next emerging prodigy in 2019, hence a hefty £40m fee to Santos along with initial wages in the region of £7m a year.
An integral attacking presence for five seasons now, his ability to influence proceedings down the right or as a second striker has proven to be a valuable resource for Los Blancos.
Lastly, there is Trent, enticed to Spain by the challenge of excelling overseas after fulfilling every dream possible for his hometown club.
If a return anytime soon to Anfield is an unlikely proposition anyway, given his tarnished legacy on Merseyside, a £840m buy-out clause inserted into his six-year deal scuppers it wholly.
