Monte-Carlo · ۱۰٬۰۰۰ runs · recomputed after every final whistle
The forecast
Every finished match updates each team’s live rating; ten thousand simulated tournaments then replay everything that’s left — group tables with the official tiebreakers, the eight best third-placed teams, the full bracket to MetLife. What you see below is the probability landscape of this World Cup, last recomputed .
Title board: Spain 29.4% · Argentina 19.7% · France 12.3% · England 7.3% · Portugal 4.3% · Brazil 4.3% · Colombia 3.9% · Netherlands 2.6%
Champion race
Bracket heatmap
cell opacity ∝ probability of reaching the round
Reaching the knockouts, group by group
Mexico99.0%
South Africa16.4%
South Korea80.2%
Czechia76.5%
Canada96.8%
Bosnia and Herzegovina55.8%
Qatar11.7%
Switzerland98.0%
Brazil98.0%
Haiti13.7%
Morocco83.8%
Scotland75.6%
United States60.5%
Paraguay72.0%
Australia56.6%
Türkiye85.7%
Germany97.1%
Curaçao7.9%
Ecuador97.0%
Ivory Coast66.6%
Netherlands94.7%
Japan91.1%
Sweden53.1%
Tunisia27.9%
Belgium95.4%
Egypt65.5%
Iran82.0%
New Zealand27.2%
Spain99.7%
Cape Verde29.1%
Saudi Arabia30.3%
Uruguay93.0%
France97.7%
Iraq12.1%
Norway86.4%
Senegal76.0%
Argentina99.3%
Algeria57.5%
Austria72.3%
Jordan31.1%
Portugal95.7%
DR Congo27.3%
Uzbekistan45.0%
Colombia95.1%
England98.3%
Croatia94.5%
Ghana10.7%
Panama63.0%
How this forecast works
Each team carries a live Elo rating, seeded from public international ratings and updated after every finalized match (K-factor 40, goal-difference weighted, with a 60-point boost for the three host nations playing at home). A match between two ratings becomes a goal model: win expectancy maps to a goal supremacy, split around a 2.6-goal total, scored as two Poisson processes with a small draw inflation of 1.08.
A snapshot plays the remaining tournament ۱۰٬۰۰۰ times: group tables use the exact tiebreaker code that renders this site’s standings, third-placed teams are ranked and slotted into the Round of 32 under the official allocation constraints, and the bracket runs to the final — extra time and shootouts included. Identical inputs always reproduce identical numbers; every snapshot stores its input fingerprint.
These are model probabilities for analysis and fun — not advice, and never a promise. Football keeps its own counsel; that’s the whole point. Methodology details and the model roster live on The Machines.