The Office Sweepstake Gets a 2026 Upgrade

The World Cup office sweepstake is one of football's great traditions. A hat, some folded-up bits of paper, a fiver each and suddenly everyone in the office has a team to follow. It is simple, it is fun, and for a 32-team tournament it works reasonably well.

For 48 teams, it does not.

The Problem With the Traditional Format

When you draw a single team from a hat in a 48-nation tournament, the maths are brutal. The overwhelming majority of entries are effectively worthless before a ball is kicked. Someone pulls out France or Brazil and is immediately the office favourite. Someone else pulls out Qatar or Curaçao and quietly puts their slip in their pocket. By the time the group stage is over, roughly two thirds of the office has already lost interest.

The traditional winner-takes-all format also tends to produce an obvious frontrunner early. Once the group stage is done, everyone knows whose team is still alive and whose is not. The sweepstake is over in all but name long before the final.

With 48 teams and 104 games to get through, that is a lot of tournament to sit through when you are already eliminated.

A Format Built for 2026

The format we are running in our office this summer is built around two ideas: everyone gets two teams, and those teams are paired by ranking so that every entry has a realistic chance.

Each participant draws two teams — one from the top half of ESPN's pre-tournament rankings, one from the bottom half. The 48 teams are paired using ESPN's rankings as follows:

• 1st + 48th
• 2nd + 47th
• 3rd + 46th

...and so on down to 24th + 25th, creating 24 balanced entries in total.

The rankings we have used are ESPN's pre-tournament rankings of all 48 World Cup teams, snapped on 1st April 2026 — just as qualification for the tournament concluded, making it the most relevant point to take stock. ESPN's rankings combine two data sources weighted equally: World Football Elo Ratings, which measure historical match results and opposition strength, and Transfermarkt squad valuations, which reflect the current quality of each nation's player pool. You can see the full ESPN rankings here.

The pairing system means nobody draws two outsiders and nobody draws two favourites. Every entry has a team capable of going deep in the tournament paired with a team that can still contribute points along the way.

The Scoring System

Points are accumulated across both of your teams throughout the tournament:

• Group Stage Win = 3 points
• Group Stage Draw = 1 point
• Round of 32 Win = 5 points
• Round of 16 Win = 6 points
• Quarter-Final Win = 7 points
• Semi-Final Win = 10 points
• Final Win = 15 points
• Each Goal Scored = 1 point
• Each Red Card = -5 points

A few clarifications worth noting before you start. Knockout matches do not award draw points — if it goes to extra time or penalties, the winner collects the points for that round. Goals scored in extra time count. Penalty shootout goals do not. Red cards received at any point, including extra time, count against you.

Why the Leaderboard Stays Competitive

This is the part that makes the format genuinely worth running. Because points accumulate from goals, results and discipline across both teams and across all seven rounds, the leaderboard rarely settles until very late in the tournament.

Consider this scenario. One participant has France, who reach the semi-finals. That is a strong return — three group stage wins, a Round of 32 win, a Round of 16 win and a quarter-final win, plus however many goals they have scored along the way. A healthy total by any measure.

But another participant with two mid-ranked sides — say Japan and Canada, both reaching the Round of 16 — could easily be competitive. Six group stage games between them, two Round of 32 wins, two Round of 16 wins, and goals from both sides throughout. Add in the fact that France's lower-seeded partner Qatar contributes very little, and the picture shifts considerably.

In theory, a participant whose teams both exit at the Round of 16 and quarter-final respectively could still be leading the leaderboard going into the final, and could win the whole thing without either team lifting the trophy. That is what makes this format interesting — there are multiple routes to the top.

Multiple Ways to Win

The traditional sweepstake has one route to winning: your team lifts the trophy. This format has several.

You can win with one dominant team that goes all the way. You can win with two consistent teams that grind out results and score goals across the group stage and into the knockouts. You can win with an underdog who nobody expected to get past the group stage but who ends up in the quarter-finals. And critically, goals matter throughout — even after your teams have secured their knockout place, a 3-0 win is worth more than a 1-0 win. There is always a reason to watch.

The red card penalty also adds a small but genuine jeopardy. A cynical challenge in a dead rubber group game costs your entry five points. Discipline matters.

Running It in Your Office

In our office we are running it at £5 an entry, with prizes of £70 for the winner, £30 for second and £20 for third. With 24 entries that covers the prize pot and keeps it competitive enough to feel worthwhile without anyone losing sleep over it.

The draw itself is straightforward. Write the 24 pairings on slips of paper — we have produced a full pairings graphic above showing all 24 entries across the alphabet from A to X — put them in a hat and let everyone draw blind. No strategy, no arguments, just luck of the draw with the rankings doing the balancing work for you.

We are currently building a tool on MyTourneyTime that will track the live leaderboard throughout the tournament as results come in, so if you want to run this format in your own office you will be able to follow the standings right here as the World Cup progresses, you'll just need to ensure you use the same team pairings. We will publish the full results as the tournament unfolds.

May the best pair of teams win.