How to Play

Hello and welcome to My Footy Bracket Pool! If you're reading this, you've been invited to take part in a bracket competition for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted across the USA, Canada, and Mexico. There's, of course, no fun in the process without a little skin in the game. The buy-in is $25 and the top five brackets take home a share of the pool. If you're interested, create an account, fill out your bracket, and hit submit. Then Venmo @conorgill (or, if you're in Europe, send it by Revolut to @conorrgill) with your predicted tournament winner as the tag. The deadline for your bracket and buy-in is one hour before kickoff (2PM ET) for the first match on June 11, 2026, and there's only one bracket allowed per person. Reach out to conorrgill@gmail.com with any questions. Good luck!

Filling Out Your Bracket

1. 1Begin by selecting the ordering from 1–4 for each group. The bracket will then auto-populate with the correct teams.
2. 2Then, select the eight best third-place teams. The bracket will auto-populate with the correct third-place teams. Note that order does not matter for how third-place teams qualify. Only whether they are among the best eight third-place teams.
3. 3Now, click the team you predict to win each knockout match to advance it toward the centre, all the way until you've selected a champion.
4. 4Next, fill out your pick for the Golden Boot (you can type a name manually if your pick isn't on the list) and your guess for the total number of tournament goals. This is the combined number of goals scored by every team across all 104 matches of the tournament — not just the goals in the final, and not the goals scored by the Golden Boot winner. For perspective, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar produced 172 goals across just 64 matches — and this tournament has expanded to 104 matches, so expect a higher total.
5. 5Finally, click the Submit bracket button. You'll be taken to a confirmation page once your picks are in — and you can come back and edit them any time before the deadline.