Cristiano Ronaldo: "Probably My Last Year of Football"
In a new Vogue interview, Ronaldo goes further than his earlier World Cup comments, this time pointing at retirement from the game entirely.
By Priya Anand · 16 Aug 2026 · 3 min read · Canada edition
Cristiano Ronaldo playing for Portugal, 2018. Photo: Анна Нэсси, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).Cristiano Ronaldo has said the coming season will probably be his last as a professional footballer. "This is probably my last year of football, and I want to leave a spectacular legacy," the 41-year-old told Vogue in an interview published in August.
It goes further than anything he has said before. In November 2025 he confirmed only that the 2026 World Cup would "definitely" be his last international tournament. "I will be 41 years old and I think will be the moment in the big competition," he said at the time. This new comment reaches beyond Portugal to his club career as well, although he stopped short of naming a date.
The end of the World Cup chapter
That World Cup has now come and gone. Portugal went out in the round of 16 on 6 July in Dallas, beaten 1-0 by Spain through a stoppage-time goal from substitute Mikel Merino. Ronaldo scored three times in the tournament, twice against Uzbekistan and a penalty against Croatia.
He left without a dramatic farewell. "It was my last World Cup, yes, but I'll now have time to reflect and be with my family," he said after the Spain game. "I'm sad to be leaving the World Cup like this. I gave it my all. I did my best, and I'm leaving with a clear conscience." On whether he would keep playing for Portugal at all, he would not commit either way. "I don't make decisions in the heat of the moment."
He also pointed to what he had won for his country: the 2016 European Championship and the Nations League in 2019 and 2025, in a national team that had won no major titles before his era.
What comes next
The Vogue interview was the first time he has sounded settled on the idea of stopping. He said his future was "all mapped out" and that he had so many things to keep him busy it was hard to name just one. He talked about travelling more and about padel, which he said he loves to watch and play.
He also acknowledged that stopping will not be easy. Football could leave "a big hole", he said, and you have to fill your time in various ways, not just one. "After all it's been 25 years with a lot of sacrifice."
The interview came around the same time as his marriage to his long-time partner Georgina Rodríguez, in a small ceremony in Cascais on the Portuguese coast. Ronaldo is a father of five.
The numbers behind the career
Twenty-five years is the number worth sitting with. Ronaldo made his senior debut for Sporting in 2002, before many of his current opponents were born. In the years since he has won the Champions League five times, the Ballon d'Or five times, and league titles in England, Spain and Italy with Manchester United, Real Madrid and Juventus.
Since January 2023 he has played for Al-Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, where, by the time of the interview, he had scored 102 goals in 107 matches. For Portugal he has played 233 times and scored 146 goals, both men's international records.
A careful kind of goodbye
"Probably" is doing a lot of work in that Vogue quote. Ronaldo has talked before about playing "one or two years" more, and the picture has shifted gradually rather than arriving all at once. He has not named a final match, and he has left himself room to change his mind.
But for a player who has always preferred to control his own story, the direction is now clear. The career is closing not with one dramatic announcement but with a series of careful statements, each one a little more final than the last.
