8 June 2026
World Cup table now defaults to Elo ratings
Following feedback from the fantasy football community — including some great discussion on Reddit — we've added World Football Elo ratings as an alternative (and now default) difficulty system for the World Cup 2026 fixture difficulty table.
What are Elo ratings?
Elo is a rating system originally developed for chess and now widely used in football. Unlike FIFA rankings — which are updated periodically and can lag behind recent form — World Football Elo ratings update after every result and weight wins by the strength of the opponent. Beat Argentina and your rating jumps significantly; beat a lower-ranked side and it barely moves.
The ratings we use come from eloratings.net, the most widely referenced source for international football Elo data.
What changes in practice?
The two systems largely agree on the elite teams (Spain, Argentina, France, England are top in both), but diverge meaningfully for mid-table nations:
- Norway (ranked 34th by FIFA) jumps to a strength-4 opponent in Elo — the Haaland generation has quietly produced some of the best qualifying results in Europe
- Turkey (ranked 40th by FIFA) is similarly underrated by FIFA, sitting comfortably in the strength-4 bracket in Elo
- Germany drops from strength 5 (FIFA top 8) to strength 4 in Elo, reflecting a difficult recent period
- Qatar drops sharply — ranked 27th by FIFA but one of the weakest teams in Elo terms, sitting in the bottom tier
How the Score column works in Elo mode
In FIFA mode, the Score is the sum of 6 − difficulty across selected matchdays (range: 0–5 per fixture). In Elo mode, the Score uses raw Elo values: 2500 − opponent_elo per fixture. This gives continuous separation between teams rather than collapsing them into five buckets — a team facing Qatar (Elo 1421) scores 1079 for that fixture, while a team facing Spain (Elo 2155) scores just 345.
The pill colours in the table still use the 1–5 scale so they remain easy to read at a glance.
Switching between Elo and FIFA
Use the Elo / FIFA toggle at the top of the controls card. The table re-sorts instantly — no page reload needed. Elo is the default, but FIFA mode is there if you prefer the familiar ranking-based view.