World Cup 2026
Predicting the Round of 32 From Recent Form in 2026
Pre-tournament simulation · Jun 28
Round of 32 → the final · Poisson model · frozen Jun 28, 2026
I froze this bracket on Jun 28, before a knockout ball was kicked, and played all 31 ties in one pass. Every pairing past the Round of 32 is the model's own guess at who would meet, not the draw that actually happened, and the champion it handed the cup to was not the one who lifted it. The refits come later: for each round I rebuilt the ratings on everything played up to that point and priced the real pairings, and those boards are further down this page. Start at the outside and follow the winners toward the middle, or use the view buttons to jump to one half of the draw.
Final tally · updated Jul 21, 2026
32 of 32 ties settledAdvancement calls
95% interval 58% to 87%
ties where the model picked the right team to go through
Across the 6 markets
95% interval 49% to 63%
every market prediction, summed over settled games
Paper ledger
16 contracts · 5 games
half-Kelly sizing against the quoted price, settled at par. Paper units, never money.
The six bets
Detailed result breakdown · 32 games
The walk-forward boards, round by round
| Method | Bivariate-Poisson / Dixon-Coles; ratings fit by regularized Poisson MLE (World-Cup weighted). |
| Data | From 200 total 2026 matches: the full group stage (72) + 128 international friendlies across all teams. |
| Markets | StatsAPI connected; real market outcomes compared against the model to find a market edge. |
Model estimates carry variance; this was a forecast, not betting advice.