Football Predictions

Live demo

Looking for the pre-2026 code? See legacy/.

Football Predictions simulates international football tournaments from pre-tournament ratings and tournament definitions. The current version reads ratings from eloratings.net, runs Monte Carlo simulations of group stages and knockout brackets, and lets you adjust the model directly in the browser. Controls include ELO predictive strength, home advantage, recent form, and late-round effects. The model can also be backtested against completed World Cups and Euros.

Run It Yourself

The Python simulator can be run directly against any tournament YAML file:

python3 simulate.py tournaments/wc_2026.yaml

Run more or fewer simulations with --n:

python3 simulate.py tournaments/euro_2024.yaml --n 50000

Use --seed for reproducible output:

python3 simulate.py tournaments/wc_2022.yaml --n 10000 --seed 1

Example output is a table of each team's probability of reaching later stages and winning the tournament.

Layout

• football_predictions.html — project metadata, template, and page styles.
• football_predictions.py — Django project adapter and lazy backtest endpoint.
• static/simulate.js — browser/Node tournament simulator.
• static/app.js — frontend controls, rendering, and backtesting.
• tournaments/ — YAML tournament definitions and historical results.
• fetch_elo.py — scraper/updater for ELO ratings and match schedules.
• simulate.py — Python simulator used by data tooling.
• test_*.js — focused Node tests for simulator/model behavior.

Data Updates

Tournament YAML files contain:

• elo — rating at the tournament cutoff.
• elo_9m — rating roughly nine months before the tournament.
• actual group and knockout results, where available.

To refresh one tournament:

python3 fetch_elo.py tournaments/wc_2026.yaml