World Cup 2026 Power Rankings

How did we rank the teams?

We asked the 40 experts across the DAZN worldwide network, including Germany, Japan, Portugal, Spain, England, US and Italy, to rank every World Cup team in five different categories, marking each one out of five for how best suited they felt the team were in that field. 

In the end, two teams ranked the highest with an average score of 4.5 for each category, and that was France and Spain, who are seen as the two strongest sides at the tournament. 

Defending champions Argentina came third, with Brazil , Portugal and then England making up the top six. 

At the other end of the scale, debutants Curacao and Uzbekistan were the two lowest-ranked teams with an average score of just 1.7 per category. 

Who's going to win each World Cup group? 

Those rankings were collated and used to predict how each group would finish in the opening phase of the tournament. 

All twelve groups were analysed and for the majority our experts feel they will go to form. Although some notable exceptions came with Turkey topping their group ahead of the USA , while Senegal were ranked more likely to finish runners-up to France than Norway. 

Who are the World Cup's dark horses? 

Everyone loves a dark horse, and each expert was asked who they think will exceed expectations in 2026 and earn that label in North America. 

The overwhelming favourite to be this year's dark horse was Norway . The Scandinavians return to the big stage for the first time since 1998, having breezed through qualifying and boasting one of the world's best frontmen in Erling Haaland. 

After Norway, there were also votes for Japan, Turkey and Ecuador, while Scotland also snuck into the top eight. 

 

Who is going to win the World Cup? 

The big question that everyone has their own view on, but there was a clear outright favourite among the DAZN team. 

With more than half of our experts going for a France win in North America. It would be the French side's third final in row, having won the tournament in 2018 and finished runners-up four years ago. 

After France, it's Spain (six predictions) and then England (five predictions) who the team believe also have a chance of lifting the famous trophy next month. 

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