Artificial intelligence has already picked its favourite for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, according to a press report on Tuesday.
The website "Foot Mercato" reported that, based on predictions from French data and artificial intelligence company "Avisia", Lamine Yamal leads the field with a 23% chance of winning the award, ahead of Harry Kane on 21% and Kylian Mbappe on 19%.
Rodri and Lionel Messi round off the top five on 19% and 18% respectively.
The model builds its ranking by combining individual and collective performance, media coverage of the players, and previous voting patterns.
At its core sits a predictive system built on a classification algorithm called "Random Forest", which compares different scenarios using data from the company's own player index.
Avisia claim they correctly identified the top five for the 2025 edition, won by Ousmane Dembele, and boast a 75% accuracy rate for the 2026 World Cup.
In a year dominated by the World Cup, the AI puts the rising Barcelona star top of the pile. It stops short of guaranteeing him the title.