I built a World Cup 2026 bracket predictor for the new 48-team format

The 2026 FIFA World Cup format is surprisingly complicated.

Instead of the old 32-team structure, the tournament now has:

48 teams

12 groups

a new Round of 32

third-place qualification rules

I realized that most existing bracket tools were still based on the old format and felt awkward once you tried modeling the new tournament structure.

So I built this:

https://bracket2026.com

The idea was simple:

predict all group-stage standings

automatically generate the Round of 32

continue predicting all knockout rounds

share or export the completed bracket

One interesting challenge was handling the knockout path generation.

With 12 groups and third-place advancement, the Round of 32 is no longer fixed in a straightforward way.…