Scoring a hat-trick at the FIFA World Cup is one of football’s rarest achievements, with only a select group of players managing to score three or more goals in a single match on the sport’s biggest stage.
Since the inaugural tournament in 1930, just 50 players have recorded 54 hat-tricks across World Cup history. Some of the game’s greatest names, including Pelé, Geoff Hurst, Gerd Müller, Gabriel Batistuta, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kylian Mbappé, feature on the prestigious list.
The first World Cup hat-trick was scored by American forward Bert Patenaude against Paraguay in 1930. Nearly a century later, France star Kylian Mbappé became only the second player to score a hat-trick in a World Cup final when he netted three times against Argentina in the 2022 showpiece.
Batistuta remains the only player to score hat-tricks at two different World Cups, while Hungary’s László Kiss is the only substitute ever to achieve the feat.
Below is the complete list of players who have scored hat-tricks at the FIFA World Cup:
- Bert Patenaude (USA, 1930)
- Guillermo Stábile (Argentina, 1930)
- Pedro Cea (Uruguay, 1930)
- Edmund Conen (Germany, 1934)
- Angelo Schiavio (Italy, 1934)
- Leônidas (Brazil, 1938)
- György Sárosi (Hungary, 1938)
- Ernst Willimowski (Poland, 1938)
- Ademir (Brazil, 1950)
- Óscar Míguez (Uruguay, 1950)
- Sándor Kocsis (Hungary, 1954 – two hat-tricks)
- Max Morlock (West Germany, 1954)
- Josef Hügi (Switzerland, 1954)
- Erich Probst (Austria, 1954)
- Theodor Wagner (Austria, 1954)
- Just Fontaine (France, 1958 – two hat-tricks)
- Pelé (Brazil, 1958)
- Flórián Albert (Hungary, 1962)
- Valentin Ivanov (USSR, 1962)
- Garrincha (Brazil, 1962)
- Eusébio (Portugal, 1966)
- Geoff Hurst (England, 1966)
- Gerd Müller (West Germany, 1970 – two hat-tricks)
- Carlos Alberto Torres (Brazil, 1970)
- Andrzej Szarmach (Poland, 1974)
- Grzegorz Lato (Poland, 1974)
- Rob Rensenbrink (Netherlands, 1978)
- Paolo Rossi (Italy, 1982)
- László Kiss (Hungary, 1982)
- Zbigniew Boniek (Poland, 1982)
- Preben Elkjær (Denmark, 1986)
- Gary Lineker (England, 1986)
- Emilio Butragueño (Spain, 1986)
- Tomáš Skuhravý (Czechoslovakia, 1990)
- Salvatore Schillaci (Italy, 1990)
- Oleg Salenko (Russia, 1994)
- Hristo Stoichkov (Bulgaria, 1994)
- Gabriel Batistuta (Argentina, 1994 and 1998 – two hat-tricks)
- Christian Vieri (Italy, 1998)
- Miroslav Klose (Germany, 2002)
- Pauleta (Portugal, 2002)
- Gonzalo Higuaín (Argentina, 2010)
- Thomas Müller (Germany, 2014)
- Xherdan Shaqiri (Switzerland, 2014)
- Harry Kane (England, 2018)
- Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal, 2018)
- Gonçalo Ramos (Portugal, 2022)
- Kylian Mbappé (France, 2022)
Among the record holders, Batistuta stands alone with hat-tricks in two separate World Cup tournaments, while Geoff Hurst and Mbappé remain the only players to score hat-tricks in a World Cup final.
The achievement continues to be one of the most celebrated individual feats in football’s most prestigious competition.