2026 World Cup Predictions

Who will win the 2026 World Cup? Odds for all 48 teams and 104 matches, powered by 100,000 simulations from PELE, Silver Bulletin's new soccer model.

Illustration by Gaetan “AZAAZELUS” Sahsah / Silver Bulletin

⚽ The latest World Cup projections

June 3, 2026

Because there are many charts and this page will update frequently, it is best viewed on the web. We’ll use this space to provide updates as the tournament progresses. For our methodology, see here.

See also: PELE International Football Rankings.

It wouldn’t be the World Cup if there wasn’t a world’s worth of controversy, and this year’s tournament has been no exception, from outlandish ticket prices to expansion to 48 teams to geopolitical disputes spilling into soccer.

But in about a week, when Mexico takes on South Africa in the opening match on June 11, you’re suddenly going to be hearing a lot less about all of that and a lot more about the sport.

So, who’s gonna win the World Cup?

Well, that’s a question we’re prepared to answer in great detail. This page contains our forecast for every game and every stage of the tournament. We’ll update it regularly with every match result, every tiebreaker scenario, and even every injury.

What's the catch? This being Silver Bulletin, our answers are, of course, probabilistic, based on 100,000 simulations of the tournament. That’s especially necessary here because historically, the World Cup hasn’t been particularly kind to favorites. Last month, we launched PELE, our international soccer rating model, which combines some of the best features of our¹ previous soccer model, SPI, with data on player market values, incredibly detailed calculations of home-field advantage, and some new innovations like a Tilt rating for each team that measures their tendency toward attacking or defensive play.

We’ve also run PELE back to the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930. There’s a larger version of this chart down below, but let’s give you a little flavor for this:

That’s 48 teams and 48 stories. Some nations you might not expect, like Scotland, have strong soccer legacies.² Based on our retrospectively calculated, pre-tournament PELE ratings, favorites (often boosted by home-field or at least home-region advantage³) went 8-3 in the first 11 World Cup tournaments, culminating in Argentina’s 3-1 win in extra time against the Netherlands at the 1978 final in Buenos Aires. Since then, however, favorites are 3-8, with the last pre-tournament #1 to win being Spain in 2010.

This year’s tournament would seem to feature an especially large amount of parity. In prediction markets, France and Spain are essentially co-favorites at around 17 percent, leaving plenty of win probability to divide among defending champion Argentina, England, Brazil, Portugal and others. It’s the sort of tournament where home-field advantage might break the tie. But the three co-hosts, Mexico, Canada and the United States, are a tier or two below elite status according to nearly everyone’s estimation.

So who does PELE like? While our model doesn’t deviate too much from the conventional wisdom, we don’t have teams in quite the same order. Each time we run the model, we play out 100,000 simulated World Cups, accounting for the difficulty of each team’s draw, meticulously calculating tiebreakers, and even the possibility of a dark-horse contender getting hot and unexpectedly being in top form.⁴ Let’s look at the PELE ratings and some specific adjustments that we’ve made to them for the World Cup.

Part I. Team and group ratings ⚽

Our baseline PELE ratings are adjusted in several ways for the tournament. First, we account for differences between PELE’s algorithmically calculated rosters and the actual, announced World Cup rosters. Thus, we correct for the impact of injuries or otherwise unexpected player absences.⁵

Second, once the tournament is underway, we’ll update each team’s rating based on the quality of their performance relative to PELE’s expectations for each match. And third, we adjust for home-field advantage on a match-by-match basis.⁶ The factor is customized for each team: as it happens, the U.S., Canada and especially Mexico⁷ have above-average home-field advantages.

Spain is our top-rated team — though only barely over Argentina — with roster adjustments that move them slightly back toward the rest of the pack. (Spain’s rating will suffer more if Lamine Yamal misses any matches.) England and France, meanwhile, are essentially tied for the #3 position.

While the top 6 countries are all past World Cup champions, there are some new faces further down the list. Particularly Norway and, a bit further down, Senegal, who receive a boost in PELE from highly-valued players like Erling Haaland and Sadio Mane.

The three co-hosts are in their own category. PELE isn’t especially bullish on North American soccer, if we’re being honest. But Mexico has one of the largest home-field advantages in the world, especially at the altitude of Estadio Azteca. If the entire tournament were played in Mexico, in fact, we might like the odds on El Tricolor, though with five knockout-stage wins now required to win instead of four, most of which will be in the United States, it’s more likely their luck will run out at some point. Canada and the U.S. also figure to be relatively tough outs at home.

You might have noticed that our table introduced some mascots: a fox⁸ (🦊) for Group F, for instance. (By the way, that’s a hedgehog 🦔, not a porcupine, for Group H.) We figured that might be helpful because with 12 groups this year, the group stage could be roughly as confusing as the Tokyo Subway Map. Here are all the groups, with their mascots, along with the composite ratings⁹ for each one.

Some groups are tougher than others, particularly France’s Group I (🦎), which also features Norway and Senegal. Under the old format, this would be a proverbial Group of Death, but now all three teams have a chance to get through. The United States’ Group D (🐬) is also a little tougher than reputed, with no elite teams but also no easy outs. Canada and Mexico have among the easier draws in the tournament, however.

But let’s be honest: 32 teams out of 48 advancing makes for a forgiving format. (The eight highest-ranked of the 12 3rd-place finishers will go to the knockout stage along with the winner and runner-up from each group.) Yes, we put a lot of work into precisely incorporating FIFA’s complicated tiebreaker rules into our simulations. (Head-to-head results now take precedence over goal differential.) But no country that has any pretension of being a soccer superpower has a good excuse not to advance. The expansion from 32 to 48 teams also lowers the floor significantly, with teams like Uzbekistan, Cape Verde and Curacao potentially providing for easy group-stage fodder and possibly yielding a higher-scoring tournament.¹⁰

Let’s take the rest of this in phases. We’ve accounted for pretty much every detail that we can think of, from how teams’ odds of advancing will change based on the results of each group stage game to the biggest upsets in World Cup history:

• Part II: Group stage projections

• Part III: Knockout stage projections

• Part IV: Road to the knockout stage

• Part V: Match projections

• Part VI: Team track records and historical data

Ratings and forecasts will be updated at the end of each match day¹¹. As a heads-up, we’ll show all of you some data from the first four groups as a preview, but most of this incredibly detailed analysis is reserved for paying subscribers. (Paid subscribers will also get access to our full suite of PELE ratings and our forthcoming midterm election forecasts.)

Part II. Group stage projections ⚽

As we’ve said, 12 groups are a lot, especially with as much detail as we’re going to show you. So let’s pair our mascots off into squads of four, starting with Groups A through D, which include the three co-hosts. Here are the latest results of our 100K simulations. Once the tournament gets underway, we’ll hardcode any actual results and simulate the rest of the World Cup from there.

We’ve opted to show you a lot of detail here because of FIFA’s complicated tiebreakers. Here’s what determines group stage placement, in precise FIFA order:

• Points: 3 for a win and 1 for a draw

• Head-to-head results between tied teams

• Goal differential

• Goals scored

• Fair play points (FPP), or basically yellow cards and red cards: the fewer, the better for advancement (appropriately, this is the yellow column in the chart)

• Finally, the FIFA rankings

Mexico (with its huge home-field advantage) and Brazil are clear favorites in Groups A and C, respectively. But the positions behind them may be a scramble with the tiebreakers mattering. The U.S. and Canada are more like co-favorites in their groups along with Turkey and Switzerland, respectively, though Canada’s Group B is quite weak. So what exactly are their odds of advancing? That’s in our next table: