48 teams. Three hosts. 39 days.
The 2026 World Cup is the biggest ever played — 12 groups across the USA, Mexico and Canada, June 11 to July 19. Every dot below is a team. Scroll, and follow them from the group stage to the Round of 16.
Seven sets of brothers are at this tournament — only three pairs share a flag.
Having the ball ≠ using it
The higher a dot sits above the line, the more it scores beyond what its possession predicts. Spain hoarded 58% of the ball yet drew 0–0 with Cabo Verde. Colombia took 94 shots — more than any other team — and scored just five.
Cabo Verde (pop. ~525,000) held Spain — winners of Euro 2024 — to a 0–0 draw in their first ever World Cup match.
Finishing is the great separator
Shots on target predict goals better than anything else here (r ≈ 0.90). The USA and Netherlands score more than their shot quality suggests — Colombia, far fewer.
Norway have never lost a match in which Haaland scores — and the streak held to the end: in their quarter-final exit to England, Haaland didn't score (Schjelderup did).
Cards are noise
Fouling earns yellow cards, sure. But cards have essentially zero relationship with goals (r = −0.09). The aggressive pressing teams collect both cards and wins.
Argentina committed the most fouls of any team (88) — and got zero red cards.
Goals, unevenly divided
The dots stack into a histogram of goals scored per team across the whole tournament. Argentina, France and England pile up at the high end; the teams that went out early cluster near zero.
Türkiye took 62 shots without scoring — the most since 1966 — and went home.
Then the table did its work
The 32 who advanced rise. The other 16 fall out of the tournament — including two-time champions Uruguay, and Türkiye despite all those shots. Sixteen teams, three weeks, gone.
Uruguay — winners in 1930 and 1950 — went out in the group stage without ever leading a knockout push.
Bronze went to a shootout of a different kind
The third-place match is usually a formality. Not this one: 🏴 England 6–4 🇫🇷 France was the highest-scoring game of the entire tournament — 10 goals, the lead swinging back and forth, Bellingham and Mbappé both refusing to let it settle. Two teams that had just lost their shot at the final playing like they still had everything to prove.
10 combined goals is more than any group-stage blowout managed — Germany's 7-1 rout of Curaçao was the next highest all tournament.
Champions: Spain 🏆
One month, 104 matches, 313 goals — and 🇪🇸 Spain are world champions, beating Argentina 1-0 after extra time (Ferran Torres) for their second title, 16 years after 2010. Mbappé took the Golden Boot (10); Rodri, the Golden Ball. Pick a flag in the Spotlight bar above to replay any team's run through every chart on every tab.
Emiliano Martínez made 11 saves in the final — a World Cup final record — and was every bit Argentina's MVP. They needed him: Argentina had zero shots in 90 minutes of regulation, a first for any World Cup finalist, finishing with just 2 shots across 120 minutes to Spain's 20.