The 2026 FIFA World Cup is one of the most watched events of the international sports calendar, and fans from across the globe will be trying to predict how far their team will go.

I’m a data scientist and in an attempt to forecast the eventual tournament winner, semi-finalists and teams’ chances of progressing through the group stages, I built a model to predict how the World Cup may unfold.

Here’s how I did it and what my model predicted.

Lessons from recent history

For this World Cup, the traditional 32-team tournament structure (eight groups of four) has been expanded to a bulging 48 teams (12 groups of four), with new progression rules, an extra knock-out round and a rise in total matches from 64 to 104.

The changes were designed by FIFA primarily to increase global participation, maximise revenue through more matches and boost the popularity of soccer in new markets.

Read more: Curaçao and Cabo Verde are into the World Cup. What impact can these ‘minnow nations’ make?

In trying to predict the 2026 event, what can recent history teach........

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