After the first round of games, our model NEXUS is calling Argentina as the outright title favorite at 17.2%. Polymarket has them fourth at 12%. That's a significant divergence.

The reason? NEXUS weighs recent match performance heavily, and Argentina is strongly positioned in this tournament, as evidenced by the outstanding Messi-inspired performance in their first match against Algeria. Our model pairs this context with 42,000 international matches of historical data. NEXUS isn't bandwagoning here — it's reading something the market hasn't fully priced yet.

How NEXUS performed in the first full round of group stage matches:

• NEXUS called 81% of decisive games correctly. In the 13 of 16 matches that produced a winner, NEXUS called it correctly. 38.5% of games ended in a draw (10 of 26), which is unusually high for the World Cup — draws are the single hardest outcome to forecast, as they're almost never the favored result.

• NEXUS' highest-conviction calls all landed: Germany 7–1 Curaçao (77% confidence), Mexico 2–0 South Africa (74%), Argentina 3–0 Algeria (69%), Norway 4–1 Iraq (67%), plus France, Austria, and Colombia.

• Of the three misses, two were genuine upsets that also beat the betting market: Australia over Türkiye and Ivory Coast over Ecuador. Only Ghana–Panama was a game the markets called correctly and NEXUS didn't (Ghana scored in the 95th minute).

Here's how our title odds have shifted since the tournament kicked off:

• ⬆️ England (+2.2), Argentina (+2.3), France (+1.4), Colombia (+0.9), USA (+0.7)

• ⬇️ Spain (−2.5, held to a draw), Portugal (−1.4, drew DR Congo), Croatia (−1, lost to England), Brazil (−0.7, drew Morocco)

NEXUS title probabilities as of right now:

Argentina 17.2% → Spain 15.6% → France 13.3% → England 12% → Brazil 5.7% → Colombia 4.2%. The model also runs considerably cooler on Portugal than the market does.

In 2022, NEXUS first flagged Argentina as the title favorite at game 46, while the betting market still had Brazil well out in front. Our pick moved with every result over the next few rounds, but NEXUS kept circling back to Argentina. The market finally aligned with NEXUS when Brazil was knocked out 11 games later in the quarterfinals. We're watching the same dynamic play out again now in 2026 with Argentina.

NEXUS isn't a soccer tool — it's the world's most advanced Large Tabular Model ('LTM'), a new kind of AI specifically built to help enterprises make better predictions.