World Cup 2026 Simulator

About this 2026 World Cup simulator

What this is

A free Monte-Carlo simulator that plays the 2026 World Cup tens of thousands of times to estimate each team's odds of winning the tournament — who the favorites are, and how often every team reaches each stage. As real group results land, every prediction is recomputed conditioned on them — the Pre-tourney / Now toggles compare the forecast against the live picture (same seed and sim count, so the gap is signal, not noise). Pre-tourney uses each team's Elo as it stood on the eve of the tournament, before any match moved it.

The Trends tab replays that story one point per played match — each team's stage odds from the pre-tournament forecast through today. Every point uses that team's Elo as of that date, so the lines move with both results landing and ratings shifting.

How the model works

• Team strength — one World Football Elo rating per team; a rating gap becomes an expected-goals edge.
• Match scores — that edge sets two Poisson goal averages, drawn into a scoreline (so draws happen at realistic rates).
• Hosts — Mexico, USA and Canada carry a home-field rating bonus in every match.
• Knockout ties — settled by a rating-weighted coin flip, standing in for extra time and penalties.
• Group tiebreak — the real 2026 FIFA order: points → head-to-head (points, GD, goals) → overall GD → overall goals → ranking.
• Bracket — FIFA's exact Round-of-32 slotting and the official 495-row third-place allocation table (Annex C).

Sources

• Ratings — World Football Elo, eloratings.net (snapshot —).
• Group fixtures, dates & venues — a frozen snapshot from the twelve 2026 World Cup group-stage pages on Wikipedia. The schedule itself doesn't change; only scores update.
• Live results — openfootball/worldcup.json (public-domain, scores overlaid onto the fixtures within about an hour of full-time).
• Knockout structure & third-place table — FIFA tournament regulations (Annex C), via the 2026 World Cup knockout-stage article.

Caveats

• Every run carries Monte-Carlo sampling noise — about ±0.5pt on a coin-flip outcome at 40k sims. Read small differences as directional.
• Strength is pure Elo, which refreshes as eloratings.net re-rates teams — there's no explicit modelling of in-tournament form, injuries, or squad changes.
• Knockout ties and penalty shootouts are a rating-weighted coin flip, not a separate model.
• The group tiebreak applies head-to-head once across the tied teams; FIFA's rare recursive re-application isn't reproduced.
• This is an exploration tool, not betting advice.

Common questions

Who's the favorite to win the 2026 World Cup?

Open the Title race tab — teams are ranked by their simulated odds of lifting the trophy, and the order shifts as real results come in.

When and where is the 2026 World Cup?

11 June to 19 July 2026, with 48 teams playing across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico — the first three-nation, 48-team World Cup.

How does the simulator predict the World Cup?

Each team gets a World Football Elo rating; a rating gap becomes an expected-goals edge, which sets two Poisson goal averages drawn into a scoreline. Play that out for all 104 matches, tens of thousands of times, and count how often each team reaches each stage. See How the model works above.

How often do the odds update?

The live picture is rebuilt within about an hour of each result landing. Between updates the numbers hold steady — the model conditions on results, not on minute-to-minute news.

Is this an official FIFA tool?

No. It's an independent, free exploration project. The bracket and third-place rules follow FIFA's real 2026 format, but the predictions are this model's own.

Feedback

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