Every Serie A season leaves something behind. Usually, it is in the details that sit beyond the final table: new tactical trends, new names, perhaps even ideas that reach beyond the pitch. It is becoming harder to say who was the best player in a championship, or who had the greatest impact. There is no single measure, no universal way of settling the question. Ask fans, journalists and coaches and the answers are rarely the same, sometimes not even close. The players see things others miss: a first touch that takes the ball away from danger, a movement without the ball, a pressing run that prevents a goal without ever making the highlights.
That is part of what makes the Gran Galà del Calcio AIC such an important fixture in Italian sport. For more than 15 years, its awards have been decided by people who live the game every week. Players vote for players, coaches and referees. Over time, that distinction has become a source of authority. To be chosen by your peers is a recognition no statistic can quite provide. It is the respect of people who know the profession from the inside. There is a curious way to look back at the last 15 years of Serie A: through the Gran Galà del Calcio AIC roll of honour. Andrea Pirlo appears three years running, as players sometimes do when they come to define an era. Then Gianluigi Buffon, Francesco Totti, Zlatan Ibrahimović, Gonzalo Higuaín, Cristiano Ronaldo, Nicolò Barella, Lautaro Martínez. The coaches change. Winning cycles come and go. Women’s football grows. Young players emerge from Serie B. Even the language around the game changes. The roll of honour keeps its record, season after season, until it becomes a form of collective memory.
This year’s edition, celebrating the 2025/26 season, opens a new chapter. The Gran Galà del Calcio AIC changes its timing, its setting, its scale. For the first time, it leaves its traditional place at the end of the calendar year and moves to the opening of the Italian football season. The date is 2 September. The bigger change is the stage: Teatro alla Scala in Milan. The choice made by the organisers — the Associazione Italiana Calciatori, produced by Gianluca Cannizzo for Wonder Project, in collaboration with Demetrio Albertini for DA, the sports and marketing agency, with Haier as Title Sponsor — carries its own weight. For almost two centuries, Teatro alla Scala has been where great performers of music and opera are celebrated. For one evening, that ritual moves to football. The protagonists of the past season will take the stage in a setting that places the Italian championship alongside one of the country’s most recognisable cultural landmarks. Football, for a night, takes its place inside a much older tradition of performance, memory and talent.
The 2026 edition also brings a partnership that could shape the future of the event: the collaboration with Lega Calcio Serie A. It strengthens the profile of the evening and brings another part of the football system into the picture. “The Gran Galà del Calcio AIC is today one of the most important and symbolic moments for the entire Italian football movement, an evening capable of bringing together in one great event all the different parts of our game: players, clubs, institutions, executives and leading figures from the sporting world,” says AIC president Umberto Calcagno. “We are particularly pleased that, from this year, Lega Calcio Serie A is also alongside us on this journey: an important collaboration that makes an event already central to Italian sport even more significant.”
An award only carries weight if the verdict behind it does. The Gran Galà del Calcio AIC has built its reputation around the same idea from the beginning: the judgement belongs to those who step onto the pitch. “This event has become unique in Italian sport because it retains a quality that makes it genuinely special: the people who vote are the protagonists of Italian football themselves — the players, coaches and referees,” says AIC general director Gianni Grazioli. “It is football voting for football. That makes these awards particularly authoritative and meaningful, because the assessments come from people who live the game every day and know the value of performance, talent and professionalism.”
The partnership with Lega Calcio Serie A grows from the same principle. “The collaboration between Lega Calcio Serie A and AIC is an important sign of shared purpose and unity between two historic parts of the Italian football system,” says Lega Calcio Serie A president Ezio Simonelli. “The evening has for years been a moment to recognise and celebrate the protagonists of Italian football, and we are pleased to contribute to the growth of an event which, also thanks to the prestigious setting of Teatro alla Scala in Milan, will showcase the values, tradition and excellence of Serie A.”
For Lega Calcio Serie A chief executive Luigi De Siervo, the new venue carries a symbolic weight of its own. “We decided to enter into a partnership with AIC to further enhance the value of Serie A and its protagonists. The choice of Teatro alla Scala as the venue for the awards is particularly significant because it is Italy’s most important stage, where the great performers of music, ballet and international opera have always been celebrated. On the evening of 2 September, we will pay tribute to the protagonists who, with their talent and passion, bring our championship to life every week.”