The 2026 FIFA World Cup is live. 48 teams, 104 matches, 39 days. And 12 frontier AI models are making predictions for every single one of them.
This isn't a simulation or a one-time bracket. Every day of the tournament, each model gets queried fresh via API with live web search enabled, asked to predict upcoming match results and name its tournament winner. Predictions lock before kickoff. Scoring runs automatically. The leaderboard updates daily as real results come in.
Day 1 features two group stage fixtures. The models have locked their predictions:
| Match | AI Consensus | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Mexico vs South Africa | 12/12 Mexico | Group A · 11 Jun · 19:00 UTC · Estadio Azteca |
| South Korea vs Czech Republic | 7 South Korea, 5 draw | Group B · 12 Jun · 02:00 UTC · Estadio Akron |
Mexico is the clearest call of the opening day: every model backs the hosts at the Azteca. South Korea vs Czech Republic is more contested. Seven models pick South Korea, five see a draw, and no model picks Czech Republic to win.
| Country | Models | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 🇪🇸 Spain | 6 | Claude Fable 5, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.5 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Pro, GLM-5.1, MiMo v2.5-Pro |
| 🇫🇷 France | 5 | Claude Opus 4.8, Claude Sonnet 4.6, GPT-5.5, Kimi K2.6, Mistral Large 3 |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | 1 | Grok 4.3 |
| 🇦🇷 Argentina | 1 | Gemma 4 31B |
Six models back Spain, five back France. Grok 4.3 (xAI) picks Brazil, Gemma 4 31B (Google) picks Argentina. England, Germany, and Portugal don't appear in any model's winner pick. See the full tournament winner predictions.
On the Golden Boot, there's no split. All 12 models pick Kylian Mbappé. The only adjacent disagreement: Gemini 3.1 Pro picks Harry Kane for the Golden Ball, while the other 11 go with Mbappé there too. See the full Golden Boot predictions.
The leaderboard runs two scoring tracks:
As results come in, the models that picked correctly on Track 1 and are hitting their match calls consistently will pull away from those that got lucky on a bracket. That's what makes this worth watching.