World Cup Bracket Predictions

Methodology notes (2)

Group standings shown reflect ESPN's live results plus this model's most-likely outcome for every remaining group match — they are simulated projections, not official, until the group stage actually concludes.
The 8 qualifying third-place teams and their Round-of-32 slot assignment are approximated by ranking all 12 simulated third-place finishers, taking the top 8, and finding a valid eligible-group assignment to the published slots — this is not FIFA's official allocation table.

Round of 32

South Korea 48%

Canada 52%

Brazil 63%

Japan 37%

Germany 70%

Australia 30%

Netherlands 56%

Morocco 44%

Ivory Coast 41%

Norway 59%

France 87%

Egypt 13%

Mexico 52%

Uruguay 48%

England 70%

Austria 30%

Iran 52%

Senegal 48%

United States 32%

Bosnia-Herzegovina 68%

Spain 64%

Algeria 36%

Portugal 66%

Croatia 34%

Switzerland 68%

Sweden 32%

Paraguay 41%

Belgium 59%

Argentina 71%

Saudi Arabia 29%

Colombia 87%

Ghana 13%

Round of 16

Canada 39%

Germany 61%

Brazil 69%

Norway 31%

Netherlands 42%

France 58%

Mexico 42%

England 58%

Spain 55%

Portugal 45%

Iran 78%

Bosnia-Herzegovina 22%

Belgium 43%

Colombia 57%

Switzerland 41%

Argentina 59%

Quarterfinals

Germany 43%

Brazil 57%

Spain 72%

Iran 28%

France 61%

England 39%

Colombia 45%

Argentina 55%

Semifinals

Brazil 45%

Spain 55%

France 45%

Argentina 55%

Final

Spain 48%

Argentina 52%

Prediction Theory

Elo ratings

Every team starts at a base rating and is updated after each historical match using a standard Elo formula: the favorite gains less for an expected win, the underdog gains more for an upset. A home-field bonus is applied for non-neutral matches, and a margin-of-victory multiplier means a 4–0 win shifts ratings more than a 1–0 win. Ratings are computed walk-forward through ~49,000 historical international matches, so each prediction only ever uses information that would have been available before that match was played.

Recent form

Alongside Elo, each team's points-per-game over its last 10 matches (3 for a win, 1 for a draw) is tracked as a separate signal — capturing short-term momentum that a slower-moving Elo rating alone can miss.

The model

A gradient-boosted classifier is trained on Elo ratings, Elo difference, form, form difference, and a neutral-venue flag for every historical match, predicting the probability of a home win, draw, or away win. For knockout matches — which can't end in a draw — the draw probability is split evenly between the two teams before picking a winner.

How reliable is this? (backtested accuracy)

This same model (retrained from scratch on data available before each tournament, so no future leakage) was run against the actual 2014, 2018, and 2022 World Cups:

Tournament	3-class accuracy	Knockout winner accuracy
2014 Brazil	65.6%	75.0%
2018 Russia	53.1%	56.2%
2022 Qatar	46.9%	62.5%
Combined (192 matches)	55.2%	—

Roughly 55% exact-outcome accuracy and ~55–65% knockout-winner accuracy across three real tournaments — clearly better than chance (33% for a random guess among home/draw/away) and better than always picking the favorite, but far from certain. Confidence is reasonably well calibrated in the middle of the range (matches the model called at 60–70% confidence were right 69% of the time) but gets noisier at the extremes. Football stays genuinely upset-prone: in 2022 alone, Saudi Arabia beat Argentina, Japan beat both Germany and Spain, and Morocco reached the semifinal.

Why this bracket is a projection

The group stage is still being played. Any group match that hasn't kicked off yet is resolved using the model's single most-likely outcome, and standings are updated accordingly to determine each group's winner, runner-up, and whether its third-place team is among the 8 best third-place finishers overall. The official FIFA rule for which third-place finisher lands in which Round-of-32 slot is a published allocation table this app doesn't have access to — instead, it finds *a* valid assignment respecting each slot's eligible groups. Every later round then follows automatically from "if the model's pick wins every prior match." Treat this as "the most likely single path through the bracket," not a probability-weighted forecast of who's most likely to win the tournament overall.