The question of who won the last World Cup is being asked with a fresh twist after a set of World Cup 2026 predictions leaned heavily toward Spain. On June 10, 2025, writers offered 20 different paths through the tournament, and Spain was the team picked most often to lift the trophy.
That makes the search for who won the last World Cup less about history and more about where the next champion might come from. The bracket exercise put Spain, France, Argentina, Portugal and England at the center of the conversation, with final matchups imagined in several combinations and Spain recurring again and again as the side to beat.
Alexander Abnos predicted Spain would beat Portugal in the final. Ella Brockway and Jacob Steinberg both saw Spain getting past Argentina. Paul MacInnes went with Spain over England. Jeff Rueter also backed Spain against Portugal. In those picks, Mikel Oyarzabal was not just a name on a team sheet but the sort of forward who could rack up goals against Cape Verde in the group stage and keep going deep into the tournament.
France was not far behind. Nick Ames predicted a repeat final against Argentina and chose France to win it. Ben Fisher had France beating Portugal. Barry Glendenning and Jonathan Wilson both picked France over Spain, while David Hytner and Leander Schaerlaeckens chose France to get past Argentina. Ewan Murray also backed France in a repeat final against Argentina, and Osasu Obayiuwana said France would claim a third title. Bryan Armen Graham was one of the few who went the other way, picking England to beat France.
That split is the real story inside the bracket. Several writers landed on Spain as the eventual champion, but just as many saw France at the top, and the same handful of teams kept surfacing in different final matchups. The disagreement matters because it shows there is no single consensus behind the forecast, only a narrow group of contenders that the writers keep returning to when they imagine the tournament’s end.
The tournament itself will settle the argument. These are only predictions, and they leave one unanswered thing that matters most: whether Spain, France or one of the other repeat finalists will actually turn those bracket picks into the title when World Cup 2026 begins.
