MACHINE LEARNING PREDICTION

🏆 FIFA World Cup 2026

Live version (matches already played are fixed) · Poisson (Dixon-Coles) + Elo · 1,000,000 Monte Carlo simulations · click a team or try the Match Lab

Validated on ~4500 unseen matches: 60% accuracy · RPS 0.172 (naive 0.228) — bookmaker level.

🏠
21.0%
Favourite: Argentina
17.3%
2nd favourite: Spain
Most likely finalists
5
teams above 5% to win

📅 Today's matches kickoffs in WEST (UTC+1)

📊 Odds over time since kickoff

Biggest movers:

TeamBeforeNowΔ
Spain13.4%17.3%+3.9
Argentina21.6%21.0%-0.6
Belgium1.9%1.4%-0.5
France9.4%9.1%-0.3
Germany5.6%5.3%-0.3
Colombia4.9%4.6%-0.3

Most likely bracket the favourites' path

Ranking & path click a row

The 12 groups live standings · who advances

Sorted by points from games already played. The figure on the right is the model's chance each team reaches the knockouts — it already accounts for the 8-best-third-placed-teams rule. Green = very likely, red = very unlikely.

Group-stage matches times in WEST (UTC+1)

📈 Extra analysis

🆚 Match Lab head-to-head, live

🏆 Build your World Cup you decide

1. Set the score of every remaining group match (−/+ the goals, from the model's prediction); the tables and who qualifies update live.

2. Now the knockouts — the model picks each winner, but tap the other team to send your pick through, all the way to your champion.

🎲 Roll a tournament one full simulation

One possible World Cup — group tables, every knockout result and the champion. Roll again for another timeline.

✅ Results so far predicted vs actual

😱 Biggest surprises model's worst calls

🏅 Model vs FIFA ranking does the model agree?

🎯 Does it actually work? track record

The honest test: for every major tournament since 2002, the model is retrained on only what was known before that tournament kicked off and then predicts it blind — exactly how you'd have used it in real time. That's 2,691 matches across 67 editions (World Cups, Euros, Copa América, Nations League, Asian & African Cups, Gold Cups). Verdict: 56% of results called correctly (RPS 0.190) vs the naive base rate's 44% (0.231).

CompetitionMatchesModelNaiveRPS
UEFA Nations League65854%43%0.195
Africa Cup of Nations49351%43%0.189
FIFA World Cup42258%44%0.197
Gold Cup34064%53%0.175
UEFA Euro24650%38%0.207
AFC Asian Cup23061%44%0.180
Copa América22254%45%0.186
Confederations Cup8068%44%0.164

And zooming in on two tournaments the model had never seen when it was trained:

👟 Golden Boot top scorer

⚽ Anatomy of a goal every international goal

🟨 Discipline cards so far

📉 Elo through history drag the year

Year2026

🕰️ Historical facts 1872–2026

Biggest win ever: Australia 31-0 American Samoa (2001-04-11) · top international scorer: Cristiano Ronaldo (121 goals) · 49,443 matches, 145,323 goals.

History card — Argentina (the current favourite)
593W-257D-220L (55.4%) · biggest win 12-0 vs Ecuador (1942) · worst loss 1-6 vs Czechoslovakia (1958) · longest unbeaten run 36 · rival Uruguay (85W-44D-54L in 183) · peak Elo 2209 (2024)

Biggest upsets ever (underdog won, by Elo):

YearMatchTournamentΔelo
1980Luxembourg 3-2 South KoreaFriendly+770
2009Bolivia 2-1 BrazilFIFA World Cup qualifica+536
2016Georgia 1-0 SpainFriendly+526
2023Kazakhstan 3-2 DenmarkUEFA Euro qualification+522
2007Equatorial Guinea 1-0 CameroonAfrican Cup of Nations q+520
2010Niger 1-0 EgyptAfrican Cup of Nations q+515

👟 Shooting first wins 53.1% of shootouts · penalty kings: Padania 100% · Indonesia 91% · Ethiopia 88% · Guinea 80%. ⚽ Goals/match in the 2020s: 2.71 · home wins in the 2020s: 51.1%.

⚔️ Beat the Machine you vs the model

Predict the upcoming matches — tap the model's call to fill it in, or set your own with −/+. Locked at kickoff. Points stack up: ✅ right result +10 · ⚽ each team's exact goals +5 · 📏 goal difference +5 · 🎯 exact score +5 (perfect = 30). The model plays too — can you beat it? Sign in with Google to make your picks, choose a username and climb the global leaderboard.

Data-driven model, just for fun. ⚽ Data: International football results 1872–2026.