2026 World Cup Predictions Give France and Spain the Edge — World Cup Games
Silver Bulletin’s world cup games forecast now runs through 100,000 simulations, with France and Spain sitting around 17 percent in prediction markets. The page, titled 2026 World Cup Predictions, is built to update frequently as the tournament progresses and already maps every game and every stage of the expanded 48-team field.
Silver Bulletin and PELE
The forecast comes from PELE, Silver Bulletin’s international soccer rating model launched last month. PELE folds in features from Silver Bulletin’s previous soccer model SPI, plus player market values, home-field advantage calculations, and a Tilt rating for each team.
That setup is meant to do more than sort teams by reputation. The model also adjusts baseline ratings for differences between algorithmically calculated rosters and the actual announced World Cup rosters, a step intended to account for injuries or other unexpected absences before the tournament starts.
World Cup simulations and draws
Silver Bulletin says it ran PELE back to the first World Cup in Uruguay in 1930, then used retrospectively calculated pre-tournament ratings to test how often the favorites held up. In those first 11 tournaments, favorites went 8-3. Since Argentina beat the Netherlands 3-1 in extra time in the 1978 final in Buenos Aires, though, favorites are 3-8 in World Cup tournaments.
Spain was the last pre-tournament number one to win the World Cup, doing it in 2010. The page also says the model plays out 100,000 simulated World Cups each time it runs, accounts for the difficulty of each team’s draw, calculates tiebreakers, and allows for a dark-horse contender to catch fire and finish in top form.
Mexico on June 11
The opening match is set for June 11, when Mexico takes on South Africa. Mexico, Canada and the United States are described as a tier or two below elite status according to nearly everyone’s estimation, putting the co-hosts behind the top tier even before the first ball is kicked.
For readers tracking the field before the tournament begins, the useful detail is not just who the model likes. It is how often the page will change and how wide the simulation net is: every game, every stage, 100,000 runs, with the forecast set to evolve as the World Cup moves forward.
