How the bracket works

48 teams are split into 12 groups (A–L) of four. Every team plays the other three in its group. The top two from each group (24 teams) advance, plus the 8 best third-placed teams across all groups — 32 teams in total, who enter a Round of 32.

Teams in a group are ranked by:

1. Points (3 for a win, 1 for a draw)
2. Head-to-head among the tied teams: their mini-table points, then goal difference, then goals — applied before overall figures (a 2026 rule change)
3. Overall goal difference, then overall goals scored
4. Disciplinary (fair-play) record
5. FIFA ranking

When a tie can only be broken by the disciplinary record or FIFA ranking, the table flags it with a ⚠ and lets you set a manual order.

Only 8 of the 12 third-placed teams advance, and FIFA does not simply seed them. Instead it uses a fixed lookup table with one row for every possible combination of which 8 groups produced a qualifying third — 495 combinations in all. That table decides which third-placed team is sent into each Round-of-32 slot, carefully avoiding rematches of teams that already met in the group stage. This app encodes the official table and resolves it for you.

Official brackets are full of codes. This app always shows them in plain language (and the real team once it’s known), but here’s the key:

• 1AWinner of Group A
• 2ARunner-up of Group A
• 3ABCDFThe best third-placed team from one of Groups A, B, C, D or F
• W74Winner of Match 74
• RU101 / L101The losing semi-finalist from Match 101

Enter scores on the Groups page and watch the tables, the best-third ranking, and the whole bracket update instantly. On the Bracket page, enter knockout scores — extra-time and penalty fields appear automatically when a match is level. Share any scenario with a link, or export the bracket as a PNG and the schedule as a CSV from the toolbar.

When you compare a prediction against the real results (or join a leaderboard), it’s graded two ways — once for each match, and once for how far each team got. Your total is the sum of both.

1 · Match scores

Every match you predicted is graded on its scoreline: 3 points for the exact score, 1 point for the right result (correct winner, or a draw) with the wrong score, and 0 otherwise — orientation doesn’t matter, a predicted 2–1 still matches a real 1–2 between the same teams.

Knockout matches have a wrinkle. Because the bracket is built from your group predictions, the two teams you have meeting in, say, a quarter-final may not be the two who actually met there. You earn scoreline points on a knockout only when your matchup is the one that really happened; otherwise it’s a “bracket-buster” miss.

2 · How far each team got

That matchup rule is strict: one surprise group result can cascade and wipe out a correctly-predicted deep run, just because the team travelled a different path through the draw. So a second, path-independent layer rewards simply getting the right teams to each stage — the Round of 16, quarter-finals, semi-finals, the final, and the champion / runner-up / third place. Call the champion correctly and you score it even if you had them arriving via the “wrong” side of the bracket.

3 · Harder calls are worth more

Not every “reached the semis” is equally impressive — sending the tournament favourite there is almost expected, while sending a 40-1 outsider is a real call. So these advancement points are weighted by real betting markets: each correct call is worth more the less likely it was, scaling with the “surprise” of the result (the −log₂ of its market probability). In practice:

• Correctly calling the favourite to lift the trophy is worth roughly 10 points; a genuine longshot champion, closer to 25–30.
• A near-certain Round-of-16 berth earns almost nothing — it was never in doubt.
• A rank outsider reaching the semi-finals can pay three to four times what the favourite earns for the same round.

The probabilities come from de-vigged bookmaker odds (the championship and reach-the-final markets), so the weights reflect how the world actually rated each team rather than hand-picked numbers. Qualifying from your group isn’t separately rewarded here — that’s already captured by your group scorelines.