Mundialoop publishes a win probability for every team and a projected outcome for every match. None of it is guesswork or a pundit's hunch — it all comes from one statistical model that we run the same way every time. This page explains that model in plain language, so you can judge the numbers for yourself.
Step 1 — Elo ratings measure team strength
Every national team carries an Elo rating: a single number summarising its strength, originally devised for chess and now widely used in football. When two teams meet, the gap between their ratings translates directly into an expected result — a 100-point edge means a clear favourite, while teams within a few points of each other are close to a coin flip. Ratings rise after good results against strong opponents and fall after poor ones, so they track real, recent form rather than reputation.
Because the World Cup is being staged in North America, the model applies a modest host advantage to the United States, Canada and Mexico — home crowds, familiar conditions and no long-haul travel are worth a measurable, if small, boost.
Step 2 — A Poisson model turns strength into goals
Knowing one team is stronger isn't enough; football is decided by goals, and goals are streaky. So we convert each side's Elo-derived strength into an expected scoring rate, then use the Poisson distribution — the standard statistical tool for counting independent events like goals in a fixed period — to model the full range of plausible scorelines. That is how the model can say a match is, for example, most likely to finish 1–1 but with a real chance of 2–0 or 0–0, rather than just naming a winner.
Step 3 — Thousands of simulated tournaments
A single match is only the building block. To answer 'who will win the World Cup?' we run a Monte Carlo simulation: the model plays the entire tournament — all 104 matches, through the real 12-group draw, the Round of 32, and every knockout round to the final — thousands of times over. In each simulated tournament, group tables are computed, the eight best third-placed teams are worked out under the real tie-break rules, and the bracket resolves to a champion.
A team's title probability is simply the share of those thousands of simulations in which it ends up lifting the trophy. The same method produces the odds you see for reaching the Round of 16, the semi-finals or the final. Run enough simulations and these percentages stabilise into a reliable read on each team's chances.
The model updates as the tournament unfolds. Once real results come in, ratings shift and the bracket fills, so the odds on our Predictions page are always based on the latest state of the competition — not a one-off pre-tournament guess.
What the numbers mean — and what they don't
A 12% title probability does not mean a team will fall short; it means that if this World Cup could somehow be replayed many times from today, that team would win it roughly one time in eight. Upsets are not model failures — they are exactly the low-probability events the model expects to happen sometimes. That is the nature of knockout football, and it is why we love it.
Some things the model deliberately does not know about: a key injury announced an hour before kick-off, a red card, the weather on the day, or the intangible lift of a home crowd beyond the broad host bonus. It reads strength and form, not team news. Treat the percentages as a well-calibrated baseline to argue with, not a crystal ball.
Important: every prediction on Mundialoop is a statistical estimate published for editorial and entertainment purposes. It is not betting advice, and we are not affiliated with FIFA or any sportsbook.
Curious to see it in action? Our Predictions page shows the live title odds for all 48 teams, and the What-if simulator lets you change group results and watch the bracket — and the probabilities — recalculate.