Every World Cup has its usual pre-tournament noise: pundit picks, supercomputer tables, bold fan predictions, and someone insisting this is finally England’s year. Somewhere in that mix, EA Sports FC has become one of the strangest and loudest voices in the room.
That is because the old FIFA series and now EA SPORTS FC have built an odd reputation around World Cup simulations. EA’s games have been credited with correctly picking the winners of the last four men’s World Cups, with the 2022 simulation also landing Argentina and France as the finalists. Now fans are waiting to see what the 2026 forecast says.
Sports games make predictions all the time, but most of them are forgotten quickly. EA’s World Cup simulations have stuck around because the results kept lining up closely enough with real tournaments to become a running football joke with just enough truth behind it.
The streak started with Spain in 2010, continued with Germany in 2014, France in 2018, and Argentina in 2022. That does not make the game prophetic, but it does make the next prediction harder to ignore.
It also gives fans something harmless to argue about before the tournament begins. Ratings, squad depth, team form, injuries, and tactics all become part of the debate, even when everyone knows real football rarely follows a script.
The tournament is expanding to 48 teams, which means more groups, more knockout paths, and more chances for a strange result to ruin a neat prediction.
A favorite can still win the whole thing, but the road to the final is harder to map when the bracket has more teams and more possible surprises.
It also makes the eventual simulation more interesting. Fans will not only watch the winner. They will check who reaches the final, which major sides fall early, and whether the game finds a dark horse before the real tournament does.
The branding has changed, but the ritual has not. EA no longer releases its football series under the FIFA name, yet fans still connect the game with World Cup predictions because that history was built over more than a decade.
That gives EA SPORTS FC 26 a useful moment. International tournament content, licensed national teams, and real-world football data all help keep the series close to the summer’s biggest story.
The 2026 forecast could also be a marketing win for EA. Even people who do not play every year may pay attention if the game picks a surprising finalist or backs a team that fans are already debating.
The best thing about EA’s prediction streak is that it sits somewhere between analysis and nonsense. The game uses ratings and simulated matches, but football still has penalties, red cards, bad finishing, miracle saves, and chaos that no model can fully understand.
That is why the forecast works as a conversation starter, not a guarantee. Fans can laugh at it, argue with it, or secretly hope it backs their country.
If EA SPORTS FC gets close again in 2026, the legend will only get louder. If it misses, at least the streak gives fans one more thing to obsess over before the first ball is kicked.
