Grok, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini split on World Cup winner
A fresh round of AI forecasts has turned the opening week of the 2026 FIFA World Cup into a public test of prediction culture as much as football expertise. The video exercise asked Grok, ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to name likely winners, while a separate comparison of model outputs showed major disagreement between systems. That matters because tournament football is unusually hostile to certainty: low scoring, injuries, red cards, travel and knockout draws can overwhelm pre-tournament probabilities. FIFA's published tournament format puts 48 teams into 12 groups, with the top two in each group and the eight best third-placed teams advancing to a new round of 32. For Belgium, the forecasts are background noise before the football: FIFA's schedule places the Red Devils in Group G with Egypt, Iran and New Zealand, starting against Egypt in Seattle on 15 June.
For Belgian football supporters, public broadcasters, bars, sponsors and casual World Cup viewers, AI forecasts are useful mainly as a conversation starter. The concrete Belgian stake is the Red Devils' campaign: FIFA's schedule puts Belgium in Group G and begins their tournament against Egypt on 15 June. The wider lesson for fans and sports media in Belgium is caution. Model outputs can summarise form and rankings quickly, but they should not be mistaken for certainty in a sport where one goal can rewrite a tournament.
Grok (xAI's chatbot, launched by Elon Musk's company in 2023), ChatGPT (OpenAI's conversational AI product, publicly launched in 2022), Claude (Anthropic's AI assistant, released in 2023) and Gemini (Google's AI model family, rebranded from Bard in 2024) are general-purpose systems, not football-specific scouting platforms. FIFA World Cup 2026 (the men's global football tournament organised by FIFA) is being staged in Canada, Mexico and the United States. FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association, founded in 1904 and based in Zurich) sets the competition format and match calendar. Belgium's men's national team, commonly called the Red Devils, is Belgium's senior international football side. Group G (Belgium's first-round group in the 2026 tournament) includes Egypt, Iran and New Zealand. Kevin De Bruyne (Belgian midfielder born in 1991) remains the best-known Belgian player in many international previews.
Background
Football forecasting has a long pre-AI history, from betting markets and Elo-style ratings to simulation models. FIFA approved the expansion to 48 teams in 2017, then confirmed the 12-group, 104-match version in 2023, changing the risk profile for forecasts because more teams can survive the group stage. Belgium's recent World Cup arc also warns against linear prediction: FIFA records show third place in 2018 was followed by a group-stage exit in 2022. Research by Yeung, Bunker, Umemoto and Fujii in 2023 found that model evaluation in soccer remains difficult partly because robust public benchmark datasets are limited.
Why now
The story is timely because the 2026 FIFA World Cup began on 11 June and the AI prediction exercise was published on 12 June, just before Belgium's Group G opener against Egypt on 15 June.
What to watch
Watch whether the models' early champion picks survive the first two matchdays, and whether Belgium's results against Egypt and Iran make its final group match against New Zealand decisive. The first useful check is Belgium's opener on 15 June.
Opposing perspectives
- Sports analytics researchers
Yeung, Bunker, Umemoto and Fujii argue that machine-learning approaches can produce stable win-draw-loss probabilities when recent form, ratings and carefully chosen features are evaluated against proper benchmarks. Their strongest case is not that AI can know the champion in advance, but that transparent probability models can improve on intuition when their limits are measured.
- Football uncertainty sceptics
Professor Julio M. Ottino argues that football's low scoring and sensitivity to isolated incidents make it structurally resistant to confident prediction. In this view, AI forecasts may refine probabilities, but they cannot remove the volatility that makes a knockout tournament culturally compelling and analytically treacherous.
Sources & evidence
- View sourceAl Jazeera - Video: AI models predict World Cup resultsPrimary· aljazeera.com· 12 June 2026Retrieved 12 June 2026· 33 days ago· Dated
- View sourceMarketWatch - We asked AI to predict the 2026 World Cup winner· marketwatch.com· 12 June 2026Retrieved 12 June 2026· 33 days ago· Dated
- View sourceFIFA - FIFA World Cup 26 match schedule· fifa.comRetrieved 12 June 2026
- View sourceTimes Union - 2026 World Cup group capsules· timesunion.com· 11 June 2026Retrieved 12 June 2026· 34 days ago· Dated
