2026 World Cup: Spain vs. Argentina prediction

Who will win the 2026 World Cup? Odds for all 48 teams and 104 matches, powered by 100,000 simulations from PELE, Silver Bulletin's new soccer model.

Jul 18, 2026

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⚽ The latest World Cup predictions: Updated July 19, 2026

Spain wins its 2nd World Cup as Argentina is overwhelmed.

Thank you so much for following our World Cup coverage! We were very pleased with the reaction from subscribers — and honestly also with the results, as the top 4 teams in PELE at the start of the tournament (Spain, Argentina, England, France) also finished in that exact order in the official standings.

I don’t know if you’d call the final an anticlimax, but Spain was obviously the better side. Even if they benefited from a second yellow card that sent off Enzo Fernandez, putting them a man up, Argentina generated literally zero chances until very late into extra time. Spain is very, very good — already one of PELE’s top-rated teams of all time — relatively young, and will co-host the World Cup in 2030, with the chance to build a potential dynasty.

We’ll continue to update PELE with international match results and consider future expansions of PELE, including 2028 Euro and 2030 World Cup forecasts, as well as possibly extending the system to club football.

We’ve updated the team rankings and historical data sections with the result of the final, but left other sections unchanged from before Spain’s win. This is the last and final update to our World Cup page! For our methodology, see here.

See also: PELE International Football Rankings.

Jump to a section

Part I — Team ratings — PELE ratings, adjusted for the World Cup
Part II — Knockout projections 🔒 — odds at each stage, likely opponents, the bracket
Part III — Match projections 🔒 — win probabilities, scorelines, and the knockout score matrix
Part IV — Track record & history 🔒 — historical performance, upsets, milestones

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.1 Let’s look at the PELE ratings and some specific adjustments that we’ve made to them for the World Cup.

Part I. Team and group ratings ⚽

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.2

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.3 The factor is customized for each team: as it happens, the U.S., Canada and especially Mexico4 have above-average home-field advantages.

Ratings and forecasts will be updated at the end of each match day5. Paid subscribers will also get access to our full suite of PELE ratings and our forthcoming midterm election forecasts.

Part II. Knockout stage projections ⚽

Here is each team’s probability of winning the World Cup, and advancing to each stage of the knockout round, using an old-school, FiveThirtyEight heatmap format.