Loading World Cup bracket…
How It Works
1
Pick the Groups
Rank 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in each of 12 groups
2
Pick Knockout
Build the tree all the way to the champion
3
Save & Share
Get your share link and track your score live
4
What is the World Cup Bracket Challenge?
The World Cup Bracket Challenge is a free prediction game where you forecast every match of the FIFA World Cup 2026 — from the group stage all the way through the final. The 2026 tournament expands to 48 nations across 12 groups, with the top 2 from each group plus the 8 best 3rd-place finishers advancing to a 32-team knockout. Your bracket scores points as real results come in, and you can compare your picks against the public leaderboard or against a private pool of friends.How to play
- Choose your mode: compete on the public site, in a private pool with friends, or both.
- Pick the group stage: rank 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in every group. Top 2 advance automatically.
- Pick the best 3rd-place teams: only 8 of the 12 third-place finishers reach the knockout round. You decide which.
- Build the knockout tree: work through the Round of 32, Round of 16, Quarterfinals, Semifinals, the third-place play-off, and the Final.
- Save and share: get a private edit link and a public share link to send to friends.
How scoring works
You earn points for each correct pick as results come in. In the knockout rounds you get a round's points when the team you picked to win a match actually wins it: 4 points in the Round of 32, 8 in the Round of 16, 16 in the quarterfinals, 24 in the semifinals, 32 in the Final, plus 16 for the third-place playoff. A pick only scores if that exact team wins its match, so a team that advances from a different matchup than you predicted will not score. This is the standard scoring, and it is what the site-wide leaderboard uses.Running a pool?
You can choose how it is scored. If you create a private pool, you (the pool creator) can switch your pool to Advancement scoring from your pool page. Advancement is more forgiving: instead of needing the exact match winner, you earn a round's points for every team you correctly picked to reach that round, no matter who they end up playing. It rewards picking the right teams to go far, even when the exact matchups along the way turn out differently.This only affects your own pool's standings. The site-wide leaderboard always uses Standard scoring, so a bracket's points inside an Advancement pool can differ from its global score. Heads up: once your pool has scored results the choice locks in, so pick your scoring early. To set it, open your pool with your admin link and use the "Switch scoring" button.Why join a private pool?
Pools give you a dedicated leaderboard for your friend group, office, or family. Anyone with the 8-character pool code can attach their bracket and compete. The pool creator gets a private admin link to manage members, and the public leaderboard stays separate so casual players and competitive friend groups don't clash.Prefer a printable bracket?
If your pool runs on paper or you just want a copy for the fridge, we have a free printable World Cup 2026 bracket as well. It's a five-page PDF built for letter paper: the full group stage on page one, the "best third-place teams" wildcard picker on page two, the two halves of the knockout bracket on pages three and four, and the Final, Champion, third-place playoff, and tiebreakers on page five. It's built for the new 48-team format, so the Round of 32 and the wildcard round are already laid out the way FIFA uses them. Best of all, you can now have it both ways: fill out your bracket online, then download a print-ready PDF with every one of your picks already filled in. Plenty of pools end up running both: the printable for matchday and the online version as the running scoreboard.Tips for filling out your bracket
- Use the odds chips: every match shows implied probabilities from prediction-market data. Favored side highlighted in green.
- Try "Auto-pick Favorites": fills the entire bracket by FIFA rank and odds in one click. Great as a starting point you can tweak.
- Don't sleep on group-stage upsets: host nations and tournament storylines often shift the math. The 3rd-place selection is where bracket pools are usually won or lost.
- Lock in early: group-stage picks lock once the first match kicks off. Plan ahead.