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⚽ The latest World Cup predictions: Updated June 27, 2026
England wins Group L; 28 of 32 knockout-stage slots have been clinched
I wouldn’t say England was spectacular in defeating Panama 2-0 today, but they’ve won Group L, and as Joseph covered earlier, there’s some real reason for hope this time around. Croatia beat Ghana 2-1 to finish 2nd in the group, but Ghana had already clinched advancement and will move on from the 3rd-place slot.
This year, indeed, with the expanded format, the top 8 of the 12 3rd-place finishers will advance. Tiebreakers for the 3rd-place teams are as follows: a) points: 3 per win, 1 per draw; b) goal differential; c) goals scored; d) Fair Play Points (avoiding yellow/red cards); e) the FIFA rankings.
Ten of the 12 groups are complete, so we know the 3rd-place finishers and their stats. Here is the worst-case scenario for teams on the 3rd-place bubble. In every incomplete group, the 3rd-place finisher could end up on 4 points. When ranking against incomplete groups, you can never count on any particular goal differential since there could be a 7-1 or 31-0 result, at least in theory:
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Group J: Up to 4 points and ∞ GD
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Group K: Up to 4 points and ∞ GD
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Group F: Sweden, 4 points, 0 GD, 7 GF
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Group I: Ghana, 4 points, 0 GD, 2 GF; -2 FPP
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Group E: Ecuador, 4 points, 0 GD, 2 GF; -5 FPP
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Group B: Bosnia and Herzegovina, 4 points, -1 GD
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Group D: Paraguay, 4 points, -2 GD
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Group I: Senegal, 3 points, +2 GD
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Group G: Iran, 3 points, 0 GD
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Group A: South Korea, 3 points, -1 GD
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Group C: Scotland, 3 points, -3 GD
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Group H: Uruguay, 2 points, -1 GD
Following this logic, Sweden, Ecuador, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Paraguay and Senegal have clinched a place in the top 8/12 and have therefore officially advanced. (Bosnia has also now clinched a matchup with the U.S. in the R32.)
Iran is in better shape than South Korea because of superior goal differential, and Scotland is in very very very deep trouble — though not out yet.
In fact, 28 of the 32 knockout-stage slots have been clinched. There are no more “effectively clinched” teams either. Teams either need varying degrees of help from the rest of the draw, or if they still have a match to play, they need a result — though for Czechia, Austria and Algeria, a draw would work as well as a win.
Note that we’re continuing to keep track of injuries, suspensions and other player absences. Argentina is likely to rest a bunch of starters against Jordan today, which is why they suffer a temporary negative adjustment to their rating, but this will be reversed out for the knockout stage.
The model adjusts its odds after each game, playing out the rest of the tournament 100,000 times while giving teams credit (or blame) for their performance so far. We don’t want to overpromise, and we have a small team, so expect one update per day, but you may occasionally see intraday updates after important matches.
We’ve added two new charts as we prepare for the knockout stage, which begins on Sunday.
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Each team’s most likely opponents in the knockout stage. Note that the United States is now more likely to face Belgium rather than Egypt in the R16.
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And for knockout-round games, the score matrix that the model calculates for each game, i.e., the precise probability of the game landing on a given score like 3-1 or 2-0.
We’ll retire some of the group-stage tables once the knockout round begins.
For our methodology, see here.
See also: PELE International Football Rankings.
So, who’s gonna win the World Cup? While our model doesn’t deviate too much from the conventional wisdom, we don’t have teams in quite the same order. Each time we run the model, we play out 100,000 simulated World Cups, accounting for the difficulty of each team’s draw, meticulously calculating tiebreakers, and even the possibility of a dark-horse contender getting hot and unexpectedly being in top form. Let’s look at the PELE ratings and some specific adjustments that we’ve made to them for the World Cup.
Our baseline PELE ratings are adjusted in several ways for the tournament. First, we account for differences between PELE’s algorithmically calculated rosters and the actual, announced World Cup rosters. Thus, we correct for the impact of injuries or otherwise unexpected player absences.
Second, we update each team’s rating based on the quality of their performance relative to PELE’s expectations for each match. And third, we adjust for home-field advantage on a match-by-match basis. The factor is customized for each team: as it happens, the U.S., Canada and especially Mexico have above-average home-field advantages.
You can see the impact of some of PELE’s advanced features. Norway, for instance, receives a boost from Erling Haaland because PELE accounts for player market values.
Having 32 teams out of 48 advance makes for a forgiving format. (The eight highest-ranked of the 12 3rd-place finishers will go to the knockout stage along with the winner and runner-up from each group.) Yes, we put a lot of work into precisely incorporating FIFA’s complicated tiebreaker rules into our simulations. (Head-to-head results now take precedence over goal differential.) But no country that has any pretension of being a soccer superpower has a good excuse not to advance. The expansion from 32 to 48 teams also lowers the floor significantly.
Let’s take the rest of this in phases. We’ve accounted for pretty much every detail that we can think of, from how teams’ odds of advancing will change based on the results of each group stage game to the biggest upsets in World Cup history:
Ratings and forecasts will be updated at the end of each match day. Paid subscribers will also get access to our full suite of PELE ratings and our forthcoming midterm election forecasts.
Twelve groups are a lot, especially with as much detail as we’re going to show you. So let’s take divide them into three groups of four, starting with Groups A through D, which include the three co-hosts. Here are the latest results of our 100K simulations. (Obviously, there’s not much left to simulate in Groups A through C, which have finished group play.)
We’ve opted to show you a lot of detail here because of FIFA’s complicated tiebreakers. Here’s what determines group stage placement, in precise FIFA order:
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Points: 3 for a win and 1 for a draw
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Head-to-head results between tied teams
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Goal differential
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Goals scored
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Fair play points (FPP), or basically yellow cards and red cards: the fewer, the better for advancement (appropriately, this is the yellow column in the chart)
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Finally, the FIFA rankings
So what exactly is each country’s odds of advancing? That’s in our next table: