Announcing: the Metaculus Cup Summer 2026 Winners!
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The [<u>Summer 2026 Cup</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/metaculus-cup-summer-2026/) is in the books. 885 forecasters made 88,558 forecasts on 58 questions, and the community outperformed our guest forecaster, Dylan Matthews (more on that below). Congratulations to our gold medal winners! 1. [benshindel](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/123595/) 2. [MaxA](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/174017/) 3. [Hippopotamus\_bartholomeus](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/247921/) 4. [MarcosO](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/241386/) 5. [exmateriae](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/119188/) 6. [tdeeno](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/292775/) 7. [Capital](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/279247/) Along with their share of the forecasting prize pool, each of them wins one of our custom Summer Cup dice:  Pro Forecasters [**exmateriae**](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/119188/) and [**benshindel**](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/123595/) are the first to have taken gold in all 3 Cup seasons (spring, summer and fall) and earn the large Metaculus rainbow die (the very first Cup had its own rainbow die, so they're the first to earn it under the seasonal format).  Congratulations to both forecasters, that's a hard thing to pull off! ## **The community beat Dylan Matthews** This season the Community Prediction went head-to-head against guest forecaster [<u>Dylan Matthews</u>](https://x.com/dylanmatt). The community [<u>won</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/43367/community-beats-dylan-matthews-in-summer-2026-cup/), which doubled the forecasting prize pool from \$2,500 to \$5,000. Dylan held his own too, finishing with a bronze medal. Thanks to Dylan for playing and for bringing new forecasters to the Cup. ## **A first for bots** Bots aren't eligible for prizes or medals in the Cup, but they compete on the same questions. This season Laertes and ManticAI finished 1st and 2nd overall, and FutureSearch finished 5th, which resolved our own question, [<u>Will a bot beat all humans in the Summer 2026 Metaculus Cup?</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/questions/43900/bot-superiority-in-summer-2026-metaculus-cup/), as Yes. The Economist [<u>wrote about it</u>](https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2026/09/16/artificial-intelligence-now-beats-some-of-the-best-human-forecasters) this week. ## **Commenting prize** We also awarded a \$2,500 commenting prize to the top 8 contributors, judged on the quality and quantity of their comments. Congratulations to: | Place | Name | Prize | | ----- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----- | | 🥇 1 | [WasteTimeContinuum](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/271410/) | \$600 | | 🥈 2 | [MarcosO](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/241386/) | \$500 | | 🥉 3 | [exmateriae](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/119188/) | \$400 | | 4 | [Russell-viper](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/245211/) | \$300 | | 5 | [MaxA](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/174017/) | \$250 | | 6 | [matru](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/226104/) | \$200 | | 7 | [benshindel](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/123595/) | \$150 | | 8 | [jeffrey.liang](https://www.metaculus.com/accounts/profile/279973/) | \$100 | | | | | This was the busiest comment section we've ever had. Across the Cup, forecasters wrote **988 comments** and **881,753 characters**, somewhere between **550 and 700 pages of text.** WasteTimeContinuum alone wrote **242,378 of those characters**. That's 150 to 200 pages, and the most any single forecaster has written in a Cup. He also collected 324 upvotes (second only to exmateriae's 340 in [Fall 2025](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/metaculus-cup-fall-2025/)) and 89 key factors. MarcosO went the other way. He wrote only 33 comments, but these earned 16 "Changed My Mind" votes, the most we've ever seen in a Cup. The previous high was 12, from a forecaster who wrote 101 comments. MarcosO also finished 4th on the forecasting leaderboard. ## **What's next** The [<u>Fall 2026 Cup</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/metaculus-cup-fall-2026/) is now live, with *El País* data journalist [Kiko Llaneras](https://x.com/kikollan) as our guest forecaster. Can the community beat him too? [<u>Read the announcement</u>](https://www.metaculus.com/notebooks/45384/announcing-the-metaculus-cup-fall-2026-with-kiko-llaneras/) and [start forecasting](https://www.metaculus.com/tournament/metaculus-cup-fall-2026/#questions).