EA has correctly predicted the winner of the FIFA Men’s World Cup for the fifth tournament in a row. A few days before the opening match last month, the official EA Sports FC account on X posted an image declaring that Spain would win the trophy for the second time in its history — and on Sunday night Spain beat Argentina 1-0 after an extra-time goal from Ferran Torres, denying Lionel Messi a second winner’s medal.
The publisher no longer holds the official FIFA licence, but the annual ritual survived the rebrand. As in previous years, EA ran simulations of every match in the group stages, then generated the knockout rounds from those predicted results. Spain came out on top, and Spain won for real.
How does EA get its World Cup predictions right?
The short answer is a full pre-tournament simulation, run inside the current game before a ball is kicked. EA plays out the group stage, feeds those outcomes into the bracket, and publishes whoever the model spits out as champion.
What makes this year’s call notable is the run behind it. EA correctly predicted Argentina in 2022, France in 2018, Germany in 2014, and Spain in 2010 — and Spain again in 2026 stretches the streak across 16 years. Every one of those national teams did go on to win, which is why independent gaming outlets have been repeating the record rather than taking EA’s word for it.
Following Spain’s win, the EA Sports FC account posted: “We called it. You played it. Spain made it a reality. Five predictions in a row, and Spain lifted the trophy 11M+ times across EA Sports FC 26 and EA Sports FC Mobile. Congratulations on your second star.” The “five predictions in a row” framing and the 11M+ trophy-lift figure are EA’s own metrics, unaudited, and best read as marketing rather than neutral fact. The result and the score, however, come from the match itself, not from EA.
Is EA’s simulation actually a reliable forecaster?
Not really — the World Cup streak is the outlier, not the rule. EA runs the same trick across its other sports and the results are far less flattering, which is worth remembering before anyone treats the football model as a crystal ball.
Using its Madden games, EA has predicted the last 15 Super Bowls and got only eight right, though it did nail Super Bowl 49 spectacularly, picking the New England Patriots to beat the Seattle Seahawks and calling the exact 28-24 scoreline. Its NHL Stanley Cup predictions have been a wipeout: zero correct in the past 14 years running. Those hockey and gridiron calls, like the World Cup one, are usually made before the competition starts, so the football run really is the standout.
The honest read is that this is a fun convergence of gaming and football fandom rather than proof EA can see the future. Five in a row is a genuinely striking coincidence, and a very good day for the marketing team.
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