Kevin Sinfield knighted, six England Euro 2025 stars awarded MBEs

Kevin Sinfield’s knighthood and six MBEs for England’s Euro 2025 champions place service, sacrifice and sporting success at the centre of this year’s King’s Birthday Honours. The list, released in June to mark the King’s official birthday, reflects a Britain choosing to elevate charity work, women’s football and national achievement in equal measure.

Sinfield, already a CBE from the New Year Honours, was recognised for services to rugby and charitable fundraising, especially his long-running campaign for motor neurone disease awareness and research. Leeds City Council congratulated the Leeds Rhinos legend on the award, underlining how deeply his work has resonated in Leeds as well as across the wider MND community.

His honour is inseparable from the cause he has championed with Rob Burrow. The MND Association said the two Leeds Rhinos figures worked tirelessly after Burrow’s diagnosis in December 2019 to raise money and awareness. Sinfield’s sixth 7-in-7 challenge raised more than £1.2 million for the MND community, and he announced the route for his seventh and final annual challenge on 8 June 2026, days before the honours list was made public.

The honours also recognised the England women’s team after its run to the top of Europe. Hannah Hampton, Chloe Kelly, Michelle Agyemang, Lauren James, Alessia Russo and Jess Carter all received MBEs for services to football after England retained their continental crown by beating world champions Spain on penalties in Basel, Switzerland, in the UEFA Women’s EURO 2025 final. The awards place the players’ names alongside one of the country’s most visible sporting achievements of the year and reinforce the growing status of women’s football in the honours system.

Elsewhere in the list, England men’s under-21 coach Lee Carsley also received an MBE. The 2026 New Year Honours had already recognised other Lionesses figures, including Sarina Wiegman with an honorary damehood and Leah Williamson with a CBE, suggesting a steady institutional recognition of the women’s game rather than a one-off salute.

Taken together, the honours mark more than individual success. Sinfield’s award speaks to the moral weight of public fundraising and the national solidarity built around MND. The MBEs for six England players show that women’s sport, and the collective achievement it represents, now sits firmly within Britain’s public idea of who deserves to be celebrated.