By Roy Ward,Mark Stehle
Publication Date: 2026-06-12 01:50:00
Updated ,published for the first time
At the start of every World Cup there are all sorts of predictions and forecasts.
But the vast majority rely on the point of view of a person, a computer or Paul the octopus, may he rest in peace.
To kickstart this year’s World Cup, our head of visual stories, Mark Stehle, used AI filled with a range of cutting-edge statistics to run what he called a “Monte Carlo simulation” to determine the most likely tournament winner.
Essentially, the Monte Carlo simulation ran the 48 teams and their data thousands of times using random probabilities and determined which scenarios occurred most often.
Basically, Stehle asked the AI to play 100,000 different versions of the 104-game 2026 World Cup schedule, and now we can present to you…