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World Cup 2026 Recap
Spain are champions of the world. Here's how the 104-match, 48-nation tournament unfolded — the winners, the records, the shocks — and how our engine's predictions held up, graded in the open.
📈 Tournament by the Numbers
🎯 Predicted Before Kick-Off
Predicted before a ball was kicked
Spain & Argentina in the final — Spain to win
Predicting both finalists and the eventual champion before a ball was kicked is exceptionally hard in a 48-team field. Our pre-tournament bracket got all four semi-finalists right — Spain, Argentina, England and France — and named Spain as champions. The final finished exactly as forecast.
Bracket published pre-tournament · outcome exactly as forecast
Every prediction was published before kick-off and remains part of our public record — no edits, no deleted misses, no hindsight. Just the tournament as it happened.
🏆 Champions: Spain
The Final
Spain 1–0 Argentina
Spain are crowned World Cup 2026 winners — and completed a rare double, taking the Golden Glove too.
Runners-up
Argentina
Beaten in the final. England took third, France fourth.
⚽ Golden Boot & 🧤 Golden Glove
FranceGolden Boot
Kylian Mbappé
10 goals · 4 assists
Finished as the tournament's top scorer — and now the all-time leading goalscorer in World Cup history.
SpainGolden Glove
Unai Simón
7 clean sheets
The tournament's best goalkeeper — the foundation of Spain's title run.
📊 How CleverScores Did
Every prediction, graded in the open across all 104 settled matches. No cherry-picking — this is the full record.
A random guess on a 3-way result (home/draw/away) lands about 33% of the time. Our engine called the correct outcome in
69.2% of matches, and nailed the
exact scoreline
16.3% of the time — across a full World Cup, publicly tracked.
See the full accuracy record →⚡ The Shocks That Beat The Engine
We don't hide the misses. These were the biggest upsets of the group stage — the games where our most confident calls got turned over. Mostly favourites held to a draw by sides who refused to read the script.
Portugal 1–1 Congo DR
We predicted 3–0 (Portugal win) · 77% confidence
England 0–0 Ghana
We predicted 3–0 (England win) · 77% confidence
Germany 1–1 Paraguay
We predicted 2–1 (Germany win) · 76% confidence
Saudi Arabia 1–1 Uruguay
We predicted 1–2 (Uruguay win) · 75% confidence
Qatar 1–1 Switzerland
We predicted 1–2 (Switzerland win) · 75% confidence
South Africa 1–0 South Korea
We predicted 0–2 (South Korea win) · 73% confidence
Owning these matters: a predictions engine that only shows its wins isn't one you can trust. The shocks are part of the record too — and every one sharpens the model for next time.
➡️ What's Next
The World Cup may be over, but football doesn't stop. The CleverScores engine now turns to the domestic leagues across Europe — the same transparent, publicly-graded predictions, every major competition.
See our full graded track record →