World Cup predictions: Picking the winner in every game of the entire tournament - ESPN

Everyone is using artificial intelligence to do, well, everything. With the World Cup starting on June 11, you can't scroll for more than a couple of minutes without hitting another post or video or reel of someone telling you how they used AI to predict the World Cup. So, I decided to use my own supercomputer to predict every game of the 2026 World Cup — the supercomputer is called «my brain.» There will be 104 matches at the 2026 World Cup, and... OK, fine, I lied. I have predicted only 103 of them. I skipped the third-place game because self-care is important. This is already the biggest World Cup ever, with the field having been expanded to 48 teams, which means we will have 38.5% more matches than we did four years ago. It's a lot. With that, here is what happens when a human being predicts the outcome of every game of the 2026 World Cup. Mexico: 1800 Elo rating (ranked 14th of 48), 95% chance of advancing South Korea: 1754 rating (20th), 77% chance of advancing Czechia: 1691 rating (31st), 60% chance of advancing South Africa: 1526 rating (45th), 35% chance of advancing The ratings and predictions you see above come from the DTAI Analytics Lab at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium.