The World Cup 2026 API is live: 104 matches, Elo predictions, and per-venue weather, free

June 6, 2026 · Big Balls Sports Data

The World Cup 2026 opens on June 11, and the API for it is live right now.

Everything you need to build a tournament app is on the free tier today: the complete fixture list, Elo win probabilities for every match, tournament leaders, group standings, and the match-time forecast for all 16 stadiums. One schema, predictable URLs, no sport-specific surprises. If you have built anything on the rest of the Big Balls API, the World Cup endpoints will feel familiar on the first call.

What's live today

  • The full bracket, all 104 matches. GET /v1/wc2026/matches returns every fixture: the 72 group-stage matches plus the entire Round of 32 through the Final. Knockout matches carry null teams until the group stage assigns them (around June 28), so your bracket UI can render the empty slots from day one and fill them in as results land.
  • Elo predictions on every match. GET /v1/wc2026/matches/{game_id} returns an elo_prediction block with home, draw, and away win probabilities, a predicted winner, and a confidence value, computed from team Elo ratings. No model to build, no ratings to maintain.
  • Tournament leaders and the Golden Boot race. GET /v1/wc2026/leaders returns the top scorers (goals, assists, games played per player). GET /v1/wc2026/golden-boot returns the tournament-wide top-scorers leaderboard. Both carry an explicit lifecycle state: pre_tournament before June 11, then in_progress, then finished, so your UI always knows which phase it is rendering.
  • Group standings and advancement odds. GET /v1/wc2026/standings returns the group tables. GET /v1/wc2026/group/{A-L}/advancement returns each team's probability of finishing first, second, third, or fourth in its group.
  • Weather for all 16 stadiums. GET /v1/matches/{id}/weather returns the match-time forecast (temperature, precipitation, wind, and a normalized condition) for every World Cup venue, sourced from Open-Meteo.
  • Match odds. GET /v1/odds?tournament=wc2026 returns moneyline, handicap, and totals. The June 11 opener has lines now; the rest populate as sportsbooks open their markets.

All of it is on the free tier: 1,000 requests a day, 2,000 if you connect a GitHub account.

What's coming

We document what works, so here is what is not live yet:

  • Player match stats populate after kickoff. No World Cup match has been played yet, so there is nothing to return today. Once matches finish, per-player stats resolve through the same endpoints you already use everywhere else in the API.

Get started in three calls

First, get an API key. It takes about 30 seconds at bigballsdata.com: sign in with a magic link, no password, and your key is ready. Send it as a bearer token on every request.

1. Pull the full fixture list.

curl "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/wc2026/matches" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

{
  "data": [
    {
      "match_id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
      "sport": "football",
      "home": { "team_id": "...", "display_name": "Mexico" },
      "away": { "team_id": "...", "display_name": "South Africa" },
      "scores": { "value": { "home": null, "away": null, "status": "scheduled" } },
      "start_time": "2026-06-11T19:00:00Z",
      "status": "scheduled"
    }
  ]
}

2. Get one match with its Elo win probabilities.

curl "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/wc2026/matches/{game_id}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

{
  "match": {
    "match_id": "a1b2c3d4-...",
    "stage_name": "Group A",
    "home_team": { "name": "Mexico", "elo_rating": 1764 },
    "away_team": { "name": "South Africa", "elo_rating": 1551 }
  },
  "elo_prediction": {
    "home_win_probability": 0.409,
    "draw_probability": 0.285,
    "away_win_probability": 0.307,
    "predicted_winner": "Mexico",
    "confidence": 0.7
  }
}

3. Read the tournament leaders.

curl "https://api.bigballsdata.com/v1/wc2026/leaders" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

{
  "data": {
    "tournament_state": "pre_tournament",
    "topscorers": []
  }
}

Before the opener, topscorers is empty and tournament_state is pre_tournament. The shape never changes once goals start landing, so you can build the leaderboard UI today and watch it fill in on June 11.

Build on it

The full World Cup surface, an interactive endpoint explorer, and the OpenAPI spec are on the World Cup 2026 API page. For machine-readable discovery, point your agent at /llms.txt or the OpenAPI spec.

Three days to kickoff. Get your key and start building.