🏆 Predicta Monte Carlo tournament simulator · Dixon–Coles exact-score model · live FIFA results update each team's Elo and re-forecast matches in play

Each simulation plays all 104 matches of the real 2026 format: 12 groups of four, top two plus the eight best third-placed teams into FIFA's actual Round-of-32 bracket (matches 73–104). Match scores are drawn from a joint Poisson score grid: expected goals follow a multiplicative Elo map (goal difference ≈ Elo diff / 180 near parity, calibrated so win probabilities track the classic Elo win expectancy, with lopsided pairings producing more total goals — as they do in reality), corrected by a Dixon–Coles low-score term (ρ = −0.10) so 0-0 and 1-1 draws occur as often as in real football. On top of that baseline each team carries an attacking and a defensive style multiplier (the Attack/defense weight slider), re-estimated live from the goals it has scored and conceded versus expectation — so a free-scoring side and a defensive one with the same rating no longer get identical scorelines; style deviations are shrunk toward the field average and bounded, keeping the win/draw/loss split anchored to Elo. Each simulated tournament also draws every team's true strength from a normal distribution around its rating (the σ slider) — point-estimate ratings compound into overconfident favourites across seven rounds, so this fattens the tails; teams that have already played get a proportionally narrower draw, since once we've watched a side its rating is better pinned down, so the forecast sharpens as the tournament unfolds. Knockout matches are played with ~10% lower scoring rates — cup football is more cautious, so 90-minute draws (and hence extra time) occur as often as in real World Cup knockouts. Drawn knockout games go to extra time (one-third intensity) and then penalties (near coin-flip, slight Elo edge). Group tiebreakers: points → goal difference → goals scored → head-to-head. Third-placed teams are slotted into the bracket by constraint-matching FIFA's allowed-group lists for each R32 match (a close approximation of FIFA's official allocation table). Hosts get a configurable Elo bonus (the slider); Mexico carries an extra share of it for the high-altitude Estadio Azteca, where its acclimatised side holds an edge over lowland opponents. Live scores are fetched from FIFA's public API (api.fifa.com) on load, every 5 minutes, and on demand: finished matches become fixed facts in every simulation and update each team's Elo on the fly (eloratings.net formula, K = 60 with the goal-margin multiplier); matches that are LIVE right now are simulated from the current score and minute — with a stoppage-time allowance, so a 90th-minute equaliser is never impossible — rather than from kick-off, and the forecast sharpens continuously as the tournament unfolds. Dimmed prediction chips on finished matches show the pre-kick-off forecast (each team's Elo as it stood before that match), so you can judge the model honestly against what actually happened. The Accuracy tab scores every finished match's pre-kick-off forecast (outcome Brier & log-loss, exact-score log-loss) and sets the full model beside the Elo-only baseline, so you can see whether the attack/defense layer is actually helping. Last synced results are cached in your browser, so the tool also works offline.

Data: final groups, fixtures & results from FIFA; Elo ratings as of June 11, 2026 from worldfootballrankings.com / eloratings.net. This is a forecast, not a promise — that's football. ⚽