World Cup 2026 Knockout Stage Results So Far, by the Numbers

The group stage of the 2026 World Cup is finished and the bracket has taken over. Through the 91 completed matches in the results file, as of July 5, 2026, that means 19 knockout games are in the books: all 16 round-of-32 ties and the first three round-of-16 games. Here is every completed knockout result in one table, and the numbers underneath. The short version: scoring has dropped from 2.99 goals a game in the groups to 2.58 in the knockouts, more than half the knockout games have been decided by one goal, three ties have gone to penalties — and the freshest result in the file is the biggest: Brazil 1–2 Norway.

Sourcing, up front. Every 2026 figure comes from the completed matches in ESPN's public scoreboard feed, refreshed July 5, 2026 and served by this site at /data/wc2026_results.json so you can check any score against the raw file. Unplayed fixtures are excluded: no predictions, no projected brackets, nothing invented. Like the flagship tournament tracker, this is a living page — it refreshes as games finish, so treat every figure as “through 91 matches.” One honesty note before the table: the feed carries no round labels. The stage split is derived, not guessed — the 48-team format plays exactly 72 group games, all before any knockout tie, so sorting by kickoff and cutting at match 72 separates the stages exactly. The round-of-32 versus round-of-16 call gets its own caveat below.

Every completed knockout result

Here are all 19 knockout games played so far, straight from the file, in kickoff order. Dates are the feed's UTC kickoff dates.

*The feed records the post-extra-time scoreline only — no shootout scores. A knockout game that ends level must be decided on penalties; that's the format. Morocco and Paraguay are named as winners only because each appears in a later round in this same file. The Australia–Egypt winner hasn't played again yet, so the file can't say who advanced, and I won't guess.

Three quarter-final places are therefore settled in the data: Morocco, France and Norway. The remaining round-of-16 ties aren't in the file yet, so they aren't on this page yet.

The numbers: tighter in every direction

Now the aggregate picture, computed the only honest way — add every home_score and away_score, divide by games.

Computed from /data/wc2026_results.json, 91 completed matches, refreshed 2026-07-05. “Finished level” means the recorded scoreline was a draw — in the knockouts, that means penalties.

The margin profile is the more interesting half of that chart. One-goal games were a quarter of the group stage (18 of 72); in the knockouts they are 10 of 19 — 53%. Wins by three or more have thinned from 25% of group games to 3 of 19, and nobody has won a knockout game by more than three: the round's biggest results are a trio of 3–0s (France over Sweden, Spain over Austria, Morocco over Canada), against group-stage extremes like Germany 7–1 Curaçao and Canada 6–0 Qatar. Two details stop this reading as “the football died”: both teams have scored in 10 of the 19 knockout games (53%), essentially the group-stage rate (54%), and none of the 19 has finished goalless — all three level games were 1–1s, while the groups produced seven 0–0s. The highest-scoring knockout games so far: Belgium 3–2 Senegal and Argentina 3–2 Cape Verde.

2022 ran the other way

Here's why I wouldn't file “knockouts get cagey” as a law of nature. In 2022 — from the bundled StatsBomb file of all 64 matches — the knockout rounds out-scored the group stage, 3.25 goals a game to 2.50, and 5 of 16 knockout games (31%) went to penalties against 3 of 19 (16%) here. I unpacked in the 2022 deep dive why that 3.25 is partly an extra-time artifact. The same caution cuts the other way in 2026: at least three of these 19 games ran 120 minutes, which inflates goals-per-game, and the knockout average still sits four-tenths of a goal below the groups — the per-minute drop is a little starker than 2.99-to-2.58 makes it look. But 19 games is 19 games; the gap could move by the quarter-finals, which is why this page carries its as-of date.

What the file says about the stories

Brazil are out. The last result in the file, completed hours before this refresh, has Norway — at their first World Cup since 1998 — beating Brazil 2–1 in a round-of-16 tie. The box score is stranger than the scoreline: Norway held 66.4% possession and completed more than twice Brazil's passes (681 to 331), while Brazil out-shot them 14 to 9; Norway put more on target, 5 to 4. Norway's file reads four wins in five — Iraq 4–1, Senegal 3–2, Ivory Coast 2–1, Brazil 2–1 — the loss a 1–4 to France.

Germany's strange exit. Their four games: a 7–1, a 2–1, a 1–2 loss to Ecuador, then 1–1 with Paraguay and out on penalties in the round of 32 — a third straight World Cup ending early, after the 2018 and 2022 group-stage exits.

Morocco keep not losing. Five games, no defeats in the file: 1–1 with Brazil, wins over Scotland and Haiti, a shootout past the Netherlands, then the knockout round's joint-biggest win, 3–0 over Canada — 10 scored, 4 conceded. The 2022 semifinalists are quarter-finalists again.

Cape Verde's odd run. Three group draws (0–0, 2–2, 0–0), a knockout place, then a 3–2 exit that had Argentina rattled. The feed has no group labels, so I can't say whether they went through second or as a best third — only that three draws were enough.

The hosts split. Mexico beat Ecuador 2–0 and the United States beat Bosnia-Herzegovina 2–0 in the round of 32; both await round-of-16 ties not yet in the file. Canada won theirs, then ran into Morocco.

What this file can't tell you

• Rounds are derived, not labelled. The cut at 72 group games is exact by format. Calling the last three games “round of 16” leans on rounds playing in sequence — supported by all six of those teams being winners of earlier knockout games in this file.
• No shootout scores. Level knockout games are recorded as draws; who advanced only becomes visible once the winner plays again. That's why Morocco and Paraguay are named and the Australia–Egypt winner isn't.
• No minutes played. I can't separate 90-minute wins from extra-time wins for decided games, so the stage comparison is per-game, not per-90.
• Small samples. 19 knockout games, and the round-of-16 slice is three. Directional, not settled.
• One source. Scores come from a single public feed (ESPN); checkable, but not triangulated.

The takeaway

Through 91 completed matches, the 2026 knockouts are running tighter than the groups: 2.58 goals a game against 2.99, a majority of games decided by one goal, blowouts fading, and a lower shootout rate than 2022's knockouts. The bracket has removed Brazil, Germany and the Netherlands, and put Morocco, France and Norway in the last eight. Everything above updates as the tournament continues — the numbers are honest as of July 5, 2026, and the file behind them is public.

Reproduce it

Everything here recomputes from one file. The refresh script re-pulls ESPN's public scoreboard before each build and writes completed matches (only) to data_layer/wc2026_results.json, served at /data/wc2026_results.json. Sort by date, cut at 72 for the stage split; goals per game is home_score + away_score over matches. charts/chart_wc2026_knockouts.py draws the figure from the same file, so chart and prose can't drift apart.

Sources & further reading

• Theory: Chapter 5: Introduction to Soccer Metrics — a free chapter at DataField.dev.
• 2026 results: /data/wc2026_results.json (served copy of the bundled data_layer/wc2026_results.json) — ESPN public scoreboard feed (soccer/fifa.world), 91 completed matches, refreshed 2026-07-05. Charted by charts/chart_wc2026_knockouts.py.
• 2022 comparison: bundled data_layer/wc2022_matches.json — StatsBomb Open Data (free public dataset; attribution required), all 64 matches.
• The running tournament picture: The 2026 World Cup so far, by the numbers — goals, draws and blowouts across all 91 games.
• Context: Inside the 2022 World Cup: what all 64 results say — including why 2022's knockout scoring number is partly an extra-time artifact.
• Format background: the best-third-place qualification math behind the 48-team, 12-group, round-of-32 design.