data_report · published 1 July 2026

The 2026 Football Prediction Accuracy Report

We logged 1168 football predictions before kickoff, across 55 competitions, and let live results settle them automatically. The headline: Bawler's free High confidence pick landed 74.1% of the time (865 of 1168). Just as important — picks land close to the confidence Bawler gives them, which is the real test of whether a prediction means anything.

1168 settled picks · 55 competitions · 18 March 2026 – 16 August 2026

Every figure here is recomputable from the public ledger at bawler.ai/track-record.

High-confidence accuracy
74.1%
865/1168 settled
Medium-confidence accuracy
51.2%
528/1032 settled
Outside-shot accuracy
27.7%
266/959 settled
Predictions studied
1168
55 competitions

The finding: the confidence is honest

Anyone can post one lucky prediction. The harder question is whether a tool's confidence is trustworthy — when it says a pick is 75% likely, does it actually land about three times in four? We grouped every single-outcome pick by the confidence Bawler assigned it, then compared that number to how often those picks really won. The two columns track each other closely across the whole range.

Confidence Bawler assignedAvg. predictedActually wonPicks
10–20%18.8%44.4%27
20–30%25.7%27.1%907
30–40%34.2%37.8%37
40–50%45.4%44.7%235
50–60%52.8%52.5%773
60–70%67.7%71.3%209
70–80%75.3%72.3%649
80–90%83.5%79.5%302
90–100%92.2%90.0%20

Bands with fewer than 20 picks are omitted to avoid small-sample noise. "Actually won" is the share of picks in that confidence band that settled as a win.

High-confidence accuracy by competition

The free High confidence pick — the safest of the three — broken down by league, for the competitions with the most settled predictions. These are the regional cuts most useful for a specific desk.

CompetitionHigh-confidence accuracySettled picks
MLS73.0%119/163
International Friendly74.7%109/146
World Cup68.3%71/104
Championship79.7%51/64
La Liga75.0%45/60
Conference League - Qualification71.2%42/59
Serie A64.9%37/57
Eredivisie83.3%45/54
Premier League72.5%37/51

Only competitions with 20 or more settled High confidence picks are shown. Single-league samples are smaller than the full study, so treat them as indicative.

How the study was run

  • Sample: every one of the 1168 Bawler picks that had settled between 18 March 2026 and 16 August 2026, across 55 competitions. Nothing was cherry-picked and no losing picks were removed.
  • Logged before kickoff: each pick is written to an append-only log with a content hash when official lineups drop (~75 minutes before kickoff), so it cannot be changed after the result is known.
  • Settled automatically: results come from live match data. We do not hand-grade, delete losers, or backdate winners.
  • The three confidence bands: every match gets a High confidence call (the safest), a Medium confidence pick, and an Outside shot (deliberately the least likely of the three). Each is scored on its own outcome.
  • Confidence: each pick carries a probability from Bawler's model, which is built on expected goals for both teams. The calibration table compares that stated confidence to what actually happened.
  • Reproducible: the full, un-edited pick history is public at /track-record — recompute any figure above yourself.

Cite this report

Bawler, The 2026 Football Prediction Accuracy Report, published 1 July 2026. Based on 1168 settled predictions across 55 competitions (18 March 202616 August 2026). Key figure: the free High confidence pick landed 74.1% (865/1168). Source data: bawler.ai/track-record.

Journalists and researchers are welcome to reproduce these figures. For the underlying data or a league-specific cut, the public ledger is the source of truth.