The 2026 World Cup kicks off on June 11, and the predictions are already louder than the qualifiers ever were. Forty-eight teams, three host countries, the biggest tournament the sport has ever staged. Everyone has a pick. Your group chat has a pick. And the most-quoted pick of all this year comes from a machine.
Opta’s supercomputer ran the whole tournament 10,000 times and came back with a favorite: Spain, at 16.1 percent. That number has been everywhere for the past week. What almost nobody is talking about is how thin that lead actually is, which teams the model quietly rates far lower than you’d expect, and the one big thing I think the simulation is getting wrong.
Let’s get into it.
Here’s where the supercomputer landed, in order:
| Team | Chance of winning |
|---|---|
| Spain | 16.1% |
| France | 13.0% |
| England | 11.2% |
| Argentina | 10.4% |
| Portugal | 7.0% |
| Brazil | 6.6% |
| Germany | 5.1% |
| Netherlands | 3.6% |
The first thing that jumps out isn’t who’s on top. It’s how flat the top is. In most World Cups there’s a clear king and everyone else hoping. Not this one. Eight teams sit between roughly 4 and 16 percent, and the drop from first to fourth is gentle. With 48 teams in the field, no one is a runaway, and the model is basically admitting it can’t separate the contenders with any confidence. For neutrals, that’s the best possible news.
Spain: the model’s clear favorite, sort of
Spain top the list at 16.1 percent, and the case is easy. They’re the reigning European champions, they beat England in that final, and they’ve got a generation most countries would trade their federation for: Yamal, Pedri, Rodri. The supercomputer likes them more than anyone, and there’s a stat that explains why. Spain are the only team in the entire tournament the model gives a better-than-even shot at reaching the quarterfinals, at 52.1 percent. Their group is friendly too. Drawn with Uruguay, Saudi Arabia, and Cape Verde, they’re tipped to finish first about three times in four.
So they’re favorites. They’re also favorites at 16 percent, which means the model expects them to fall short roughly five times out of six. Hold that thought.
France: second favorites, brutal group
France come in second at 13 percent, and on paper that makes sense. Few squads on earth are this deep across every position. But the draw was unkind. They landed in a group with Norway, Senegal, and Iraq, and the supercomputer’s respect for those opponents is telling: despite being the second-likeliest team to win the whole thing, France rank only around sixth-likeliest to even get out of their group cleanly. That’s the kind of early landmine that ends campaigns. This is also widely expected to be Didier Deschamps’s farewell tournament, which adds its own weight.
England: third, and the same old question
England sit third at 11.2 percent, which is roughly where England always sit: loaded with talent, short on answers to the only question that’s ever mattered for them. Can they turn all of it into a trophy. They’ve reached the business end of recent tournaments and kept finding new ways to come up just short, most recently losing the Euro 2024 final to the same Spain side now sitting above them here. The model thinks they’re genuine contenders. History thinks they’ll find a way to break their fans’ hearts. Both can be true.
Argentina: defending champions, the Messi farewell
The holders come in fourth at 10.4 percent. That feels low for a defending champion until you remember the history: no nation has retained the World Cup since Brazil did it in 1962. Argentina will try to break that with a 38-year-old Messi, almost certainly playing his last one, drawn into a manageable group with Austria, Algeria, and Jordan. If there’s a sentimental favorite in this tournament, it’s them. The model is not sentimental.
Portugal, Brazil, and the chasing pack
Portugal land fifth at 7 percent, carrying a 41-year-old Ronaldo into his record sixth World Cup, the one major prize that’s escaped him. Then comes the number that genuinely surprised me: Brazil, at 6.6 percent. For the most decorated nation in the sport’s history, that’s strikingly modest, and notably lower than the betting markets rate them. Germany (5.1 percent) and the Netherlands (3.6 percent) round out the contenders that the model takes seriously. Everyone else is, in the supercomputer’s eyes, hoping for a miracle.
