FIFA World Cup 2026 · Canada · Mexico · USA
Replay the World Cup
ten thousand times.
Nobody knows who will win the 2026 World Cup. This project does not either — but it can play the tournament thousands of times using Elo ratings, then count how often each team reaches each stage. The fraction of runs a team wins is its estimated chance of lifting the trophy.
What is Elo?
Elo is a simple but clever rating system originally created for chess. Every team gets a number — the higher, the stronger. When two teams face each other, the gap between their ratings tells us how likely each is to win. A 100-point edge means the favorite has about 64% chance of victory. We use the latest FIFA World Elo Ratings so the numbers reflect real-world form.
What is a Monte Carlo?
A Monte Carlo simulation is a fancy name for "let's play it out a huge number of times and see what happens." We roll the dice thousands of times — using the Elo ratings to decide each match — and count how often each team wins the whole tournament. The result is a set of probabilities that help us understand who the real contenders are, even before a single ball is kicked.
Elo strength
Each team has an Elo rating. A 400-point gap means the favorite is about 10× as likely to win a non-drawn result.
Official format
12 groups of four, the FIFA Article 13 tiebreakers, and Annexe C's 495 third-place routings.
Reproducible
Fixed random seed means anyone running the same simulation sees the same numbers — only Elo changes the outcome.
Single match simulator
Pick any two teams and see Elo-derived win, draw, and loss probabilities — then sample scorelines.
Open simulator →Full tournament run
Play one full World Cup: group standings, the Round of 32 bracket all the way to the trophy.
Run a tournament →