The Bawler Supercomputer: who wins the 2026 World Cup?

Every morning of the tournament, Bawler played out the whole World Cup 10,000 times and counted how often each nation lifted the trophy. The tournament ended with the Final on 19 July 2026 — below is the final run, preserved as published, and here is how the forecasts actually did.

Final pre-tournament-end favourite: Spain at 45.7% on the last run before the Final.

Latest run: Saturday, 15 August 2026 · 10,000 simulations

Title chances · top 3

Favourites to lift the trophy

#1 to win
Spain
45.7%
chance to win it all
Reach Final: 55.9% · Semis: 69.2%
#2 to win
England
12.4%
chance to win it all
Reach Final: 24.2% · Semis: 41.3%
#3 to win
Uruguay
6.15%
chance to win it all
Reach Final: 15.2% · Semis: 28.2%

Full board

Every remaining nation, ranked by title chance

22 nations still standing. “Title chance” is how often each won the whole tournament across 10,000 simulations; the knockout columns are the chance of reaching each round. Cite any figure below — the run is timestamped and publicly verifiable.

#NationQFSFFinalWin it
1Spain82.4%69.2%55.9%45.7%
2England60.0%41.3%24.2%12.4%
3Uruguay46.1%28.2%15.2%6.15%
4South Korea46.0%27.9%13.2%5.59%
5Iran44.8%27.0%12.6%4.82%
6Czech Republic44.0%24.8%11.1%3.77%
7Tunisia39.3%21.5%9.70%3.43%
8Scotland36.6%19.4%8.31%3.13%
9Panama36.5%19.9%8.49%2.92%
10Turkey39.1%20.6%8.32%2.59%
11Saudi Arabia26.4%13.8%5.12%1.78%
12Uzbekistan25.2%12.9%5.04%1.55%
13New Zealand29.4%14.5%5.39%1.44%
14Iraq24.7%12.0%4.68%1.35%
15Qatar23.4%10.8%3.76%1.05%
16Haiti16.6%7.69%2.33%0.68%
17Curacao18.4%7.83%2.34%0.61%
18Australia0.00%0.00%0.00%0.00%
19Germany0.00%0.00%0.00%0.00%
20Netherlands0.00%0.00%0.00%0.00%
21Cape Verde0.00%0.00%0.00%0.00%
22Colombia0.00%0.00%0.00%0.00%

Methodology

How the supercomputer works

Bawler forecasts every possible World Cup match — a full chance of a home win, draw or away win, built from recent form, squad strength and world ranking. It then plays out the rest of the tournament 10,000 times, drawing each result from those match probabilities and following the real bracket through to the Final. Each nation's title chance is simply how often it came out on top across all those runs.

The percentages reflect genuine uncertainty: even the favourite still has to string several knockout wins together, and a single upset ends a run instantly. That spread is real, not a missing favourite. Read the full approach on the methodology page.

You can check we didn't change these numbers after the fact. Each morning's forecast is snapshotted and anchored to the Bitcoin blockchain before any of that day's matches kick off, so anyone can verify, offline, that the figures pre-date the results. See /verify for the proof files.

Media & citations: please credit “the Bawler supercomputer (bawler.ai)” and link this page. Numbers reflect the final tournament run dated Saturday, 15 August 2026, preserved as published.