How it works
Ratings - World Football Elo
Every team carries an Elo rating seeded from ~49,000 international matches (1872-present) and updated after each result. Updates are tournament-weighted (a World Cup match moves ratings more than a friendly), scaled by margin of victory, with a home-field adjustment on non-neutral matches. Backtested at RPS ≈ 0.178 overall and ≈ 0.199 on World Cup matches - competitive with betting markets.
Match model - Poisson scorelines
The Elo gap between two teams maps to an expected goal supremacy and total, which feed two Poisson goal rates (with a Dixon-Coles low-score correction). This yields both win/draw/loss probabilities and full scorelines - the latter needed to break group ties on goal difference.
Simulation - Monte Carlo
We simulate every remaining match ~20,000 times. Each run builds the 12 group tables using the 2026 FIFA tiebreakers (a rule change: head-to-head is applied before overall goal difference), selects the 8 best third-placed teams, applies the official 495-row Annex C assignment table, then plays out the full knockout bracket to a champion. Probabilities are the share of runs in which each outcome occurs.
How third-placed teams reach the bracket
With 12 groups, the top 2 of each (24 teams) advance automatically. To fill the 32-team Round of 32, the 8 best of the 12 third-placed teams also go through, ranked across groups by points → goal difference → goals scored → fair-play → FIFA ranking. The twist: which third-placed team is sent to which group winner is not free-form. Only 8 group winners host a third-placed team - the winners of groups A, B, D, E, G, I, K, L - while the winners of C, F, H and J face runners-up instead. FIFA published a fixed table (Annex C) with all 495 possible combinations (one per set of which 8 groups produced a qualifying third), assigning each third to a specific winner so that no team meets a side from its own group too early. This simulator applies that exact 495-row table every iteration.
Certainty vs. probability
A percentage is a forecast; a checkmark is a fact. Group outcomes (win group, advance, eliminated) flip to a definitive state only when mathematically guaranteed - verified by brute-forcing every remaining scoreline under the real tiebreakers, including the cross-group math for best-third elimination. Until then it stays a probability and is never shown as 100%.
Data
Live results, fixtures and venues come from ESPN's public feed; the bracket structure and third-place table were verified against FIFA regulations and Wikipedia. Recomputed periodically. Not affiliated with FIFA.