Every World Cup Hat-Trick Scorer in History

A World Cup hat-trick is the rarest individual act in football, rarer than a Ballon d’Or, rarer than a final penalty saved, rarer than most of the moments supporters spend their lives waiting to witness, and on June 16, 2026, Lionel Messi stood inside a stadium in the United States at 38 years and 357 days old and scored three against Algeria to become the oldest player in history to do it.

Then Jonathan David wrote his name into history as recently as Thursday night in Vancouver. and the record books absorbed another entry into a list that stretches back 96 years to a young American forward named Bert Patenaude, who did something nobody had ever done at a World Cup before and scored three goals on a July afternoon in Montevideo in 1930.

56 hat-tricks now sit in the official record.

They belong to teenagers and veterans, to strikers who lit up single afternoons and never quite reached those heights again, to players whose three goals changed the course of a tournament and, in at least one case, the course of a nation’s entire relationship with the beautiful game.

What connects all of them, across nearly a century, is not just the quality of the finishing but the weight of the moment in which it happened, because a World Cup match is not a friendly, and every goalkeeper standing between a striker and history at a tournament of this scale is trying just as hard to stop it.

The Man Who Started Everything: Bert Patenaude, 1930

The first hat-trick in FIFA World Cup history belongs to Bert Patenaude of the United States, scored on July 17, 1930, during a 3-0 group-stage victory against Paraguay in Uruguay. The circumstances around it were murkier than the achievement itself.

For decades, FIFA officially credited Argentina’s Guillermo Stábile with the tournament’s first hat-trick, a goal he scored against Mexico two days after Patenaude’s match. The uncertainty centred on the second goal against Paraguay, with some records attributing it to teammate Tom Florie and others listing it as an own goal.

It was not until 2006, after historians had dug through archival evidence and testimonies from former players, that FIFA formally corrected the record and handed Patenaude his rightful place at the top of the list.

He netted all three in the 10th, 15th, and 50th minutes, propelling a U.S. team composed largely of semi-professionals to the tournament’s final.

The correction took 76 years to arrive. The achievement, though, was always real.

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The Prewar and Postwar Wave: 1934 to 1954

The 1954 tournament in Switzerland stands apart from every other World Cup when it comes to this particular record. Eight hat-tricks were scored during the 1954 FIFA World Cup, marking the highest number in any single tournament to date, a figure that has never been matched.

The heat, the expanded format, the distinctive Swiss ball and the loose defensive structures of the era all contributed to a tournament that routinely produced scorelines that looked more like cricket than football.

Sándor Kocsis of Hungary achieved two hat-tricks in the group stage alone at that tournament, an almost surreal output that underlines just how dominant Hungary’s Aranycsapat were during that period.

They were the best team in the world, and they played like it until the final, when West Germany’s remarkable comeback ended their dream.

Ernst Probst of Austria scored what remains the earliest hat-trick in terms of match timing, completing his treble in the fourth, 21st and 24th minutes in a wild match against the Swiss that ended 7-5. That game, of course, still holds the record as the highest-scoring match in World Cup history.

Going back further, Ernst Wilimowski of Poland scored four goals against Brazil at the 1938 World Cup, though his team lost 6-5 after extra time, making him the first hat-trick scorer in history for a losing side. Football at that level can be unforgiving like that. Four goals and you still go home.

Pelé at 17: Sweden, 1958

The youngest hat-trick scorer in World Cup history remains Pelé, and anyone who has seen footage of that semi-final against France in Gothenburg will understand why the record has stood for nearly seven decades.

Pelé scored his hat-trick in Brazil’s semi-final victory over France when he was aged just 17 years and 244 days old.

The sheer confidence of a teenager performing at that level, in that match, against that opposition, is the kind of thing that makes you appreciate how extraordinary the man was before most of his peers had even broken into their first-division clubs.

Brazil won the tournament that summer. Pelé finished it as football’s most talked-about teenager, and he spent the next decade living up to the expectation.

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Just Fontaine: A Record That May Never Fall

The 1958 tournament belongs to Pelé in mythology, but the hat-trick record within it belongs to Just Fontaine.

The Frenchman scored twice in single games during that campaign as part of his astonishing 13-goal haul, a record for most goals by a single player in one World Cup that remains unbroken to this day.

Fontaine’s 1958 numbers look almost impossible through a modern lens: six matches, 13 goals, two three-goal performances, and a bronze medal to show for it.

He was 25 years old and playing in his first World Cup. The tournament came and went in three weeks. The record, somehow, has survived 68 years of challengers.

Geoff Hurst: The Only Man Until Mbappé

George Hurst remains the only player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final, his three goals against West Germany in 1966 helping England win the trophy.

His second goal, of course, was the one that sparked the debate that still simmers at certain dinner tables in Germany to this day. Whether or not the ball crossed the line remains one of football’s great unanswered questions, but the goal stood, the hat-trick stood, and England’s 4-2 victory stood.

It is also technically the longest hat-trick in World Cup history, with his first goal scored in the fourth minute and his third in the 120th. Nearly two hours of football to complete the set.

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László Kiss: Coming Off the Bench to Make History, 1982

Hungary’s László Kiss is the only substitute ever to score a World Cup hat-trick. He came off the bench against El Salvador in Spain in 1982, and what followed was brief, devastating and entirely one-sided.

Kiss scored three goals in approximately seven minutes, netting in the 69th, 70th and 76th minutes as Hungary ran out 10-1 winners.

It remains the fastest hat-trick in World Cup history and it was scored by a man who had not even started the match.

The record for the quickest three goals at a World Cup belongs to a substitute. That says something about how thin the line between obscurity and immortality can be at a tournament like this.

Gabriel Batistuta

There is an argument to be made that Gabriel Batistuta’s feat is the most statistically improbable on the entire list. Batistuta scored three goals in Argentina’s 4-0 win over Greece in 1994 and another three in Argentina’s 5-0 win over Jamaica in 1998, making him the only player to score World Cup hat-tricks in two different editions of the tournament.

Coincidentally, both hat-tricks were scored on June 21, both were against World Cup debutants, and both were completed through penalty kicks.

The symmetry is almost theatrical, the kind of detail a novelist would be told to remove for being too neat. Batistuta was Argentina’s totemic striker through two generations of their national team, and his place on this list twice over feels entirely consistent with the kind of player he was: brutal, reliable and relentless in front of goal.

Oleg Salenko and the Five-Goal Night, 1994

Oleg Salenko remains the only player to score five goals in a World Cup match, his extraordinary performance coming against Cameroon in the 1994 World Cup.

It is worth sitting with that number for a moment. Five goals. In one match. At a World Cup.

Russia won the game 6-1, and Salenko scored all but one of them. The irony is that Russia were eliminated in the group stage anyway, meaning Salenko’s five-goal evening ended his World Cup immediately afterwards.

He won the Golden Boot jointly with Hristo Stoichkov and then returned home. The record endures.

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Miroslav Klose: The Header King, 2002

Miroslav Klose scored a hat-trick of headers in Germany’s 8-0 win over Saudi Arabia in his World Cup debut in 2002. He was 24, largely unknown outside Germany and had just introduced himself to a global audience by repeatedly winning aerial duels against a Saudi backline that had no answer for his movement or his timing.

It was a statement of arrival.

Klose went on to become the greatest scorer in World Cup history, finishing with 16 goals across four tournaments, though that record now sits in different company following events in Kansas City three days ago.

Ronaldo’s Free Kick Against Spain, 2018

Cristiano Ronaldo scored all three of his team’s goals in a 3-3 group-stage draw with Spain in Russia 2018, completing the hat-trick with an 88th-minute free kick.

The match was extraordinary from start to finish: Diego Costa scoring twice, David de Gea fumbling a long-range effort that handed Ronaldo his second, the Spanish manager was fired on the eve of the game and the whole thing played out in Sochi in front of a crowd that could barely believe what it was witnessing.

Ronaldo, at 33 years and 130 days, was the oldest player in World Cup history to score a hat-trick until events three days ago in Kansas City changed that particular record forever.

He also put the ball down for every single one of Portugal’s set-pieces that evening, the kind of confidence that either irritates or inspires, depending entirely on your affiliation.

Harry Kane

Harry Kane scored three goals in England’s 6-1 win over Panama at Russia 2018, later becoming the tournament’s Golden Boot winner with six goals across the competition.

Two of Kane’s three came from the penalty spot, and there was something quietly symbolic about that: a striker whose movement, positioning and willingness to stay in the right place at the right time had already made him one of the best in the world, doing what he had always done at the largest venue available to him.

England eventually fell to Croatia in the semi-finals, but Kane’s personal performance across that tournament remains one of the finest individual scoring runs by an English player at any World Cup.

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Gonçalo Ramos

Gonçalo Ramos scored the first hat-trick of the 2022 World Cup, leading Portugal to a 6-1 win over Switzerland in the round of 16.

He was 21, he had started in place of Cristiano Ronaldo, and by the time he had finished what he was doing to the Swiss defence, the conversation around whether the substitution was a snub or a tactical decision had completely transformed.

Ramos was vibrant, direct and ruthless.

The hat-trick arrived in a knockout match, which only a handful of players have managed across the entire history of the competition.

Kylian Mbappé: The Second Man to Score a Final Hat-Trick

What Mbappé did in the 2022 final deserves to be understood properly, because the context elevates it beyond any statistical summary.

France was trailing Argentina 3-1 with ten minutes of normal time remaining. Mbappé became only the second player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final, France’s eventual loss on penalties after a 3-3 draw coming despite his three goals and despite the fact that he won the tournament’s Golden Boot award with eight goals.

The record of scoring a hat-trick in the final and still ending up on the losing side belongs entirely and poignantly to him. He was 23 years old.

The weight of what he did in those final minutes, nearly dragging France back from the edge, is the kind of performance that gets replayed for generations.

Lionel Messi Makes His First List Entry, 2026

Messi scored a hat-trick in Argentina’s 3-0 victory over Algeria in Kansas City on June 16, 2026, in a match where he also became the first player to appear in six different men’s World Cups.

The goals came in the 17th, 60th and 76th minutes, and the third one, a placed shot to the bottom left corner, tied him with Miroslav Klose’s record of 16 goals at men’s World Cups.

It marked Messi’s first hat-trick at a World Cup and the 11th of his international career.

He is 38. Just days before his 39th birthday, the Algeria coach Vladimir Petkovic could only say afterwards:

“Class is permanent. We’re not talking about just any footballer.”

That sentence covered it.

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Jonathan David Writes History in Vancouver, 2026

David J scored three goals as Canada won their first World Cup match in history, a 6-0 rout of Qatar at BC Place in Vancouver on June 18, 2026.

The occasion carried the particular electricity of a country scoring its first victory on its own soil in a tournament it has waited its entire football life to host. David doubled Canada’s lead with a right-footed volley in the 29th minute and then scored again in first-half stoppage time off a shot that caromed off the crossbar, giving Canada a 3-0 lead at the break that Qatar, already reduced to ten men, could not begin to address.

He completed the hat-trick deep into stoppage time to cap a historic night and seal Canada’s biggest-ever World Cup victory.

David is the first player to score a World Cup hat-trick on home soil since Geoff Hurst did it for England in 1966. That gap of sixty years between those two achievements tells you everything about how rare this is.

The win equalled the record margin of victory for a tournament host, matching the six-goal wins for Italy in 1934, Brazil in 1950 and Argentina in 1978, while Canada’s tally against Qatar also doubled the number of goals they had scored in their entire World Cup history coming into the game.

Coach Jesse Marsch walked off the field holding up six fingers and told reporters that no Canadian would ever forget that day.

The Records That Define the List

Since the inaugural tournament in 1930, just over 50 players have recorded hat-tricks across all World Cup editions, and four players have managed the feat more than once: Sándor Kocsis in 1954, Just Fontaine in 1958, Gerd Müller in 1970, and Gabriel Batistuta in 1994 and 1998.

Batistuta alone did it across two separate tournaments, which no one else has managed. The youngest scorer remains Pelé at 17. The oldest was Ronaldo at 33, until Messi surpassed him at 38 in Kansas City this week.

The fastest hat-trick belongs to László Kiss: seven minutes and 42 seconds. The slowest in terms of elapsed match time belongs to Geoff Hurst: 116 minutes between first and third. The only substitute to ever do it is Kiss. The only man to do it in a World Cup final and lose is Mbappé.

The 2026 World Cup has already delivered two hat-tricks in its opening days, and there are still many matches to play. The list, as it always does, continues to grow.

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The World Cup Hat-Trick Registry