The ceremony will take place next Monday
Artificial intelligence has already picked its favourite for the 2026 Ballon d'Or, according to a press report on Tuesday.
The website "Foot MercatoFoot Mercato" reported that, based on predictions from French data and AI company "Avisia", Lamine Yamal leads the pack with a 23% chance of winning, ahead of Harry Kane on 21% and Kylian Mbappé on 19%.
Rodri and Lionel Messi round out the top five with 19% and 18% respectively.
To reach this ranking, the model blends individual and collective performance, media coverage and past voting patterns.
The company leans on a predictive model built around a classification algorithm called "random forest", which weighs up different scenarios using data from its own player index.
Avisia claim they nailed the top five in the shortlist of the best five players for the 2025 edition, won by Ousmane Dembélé, and they boast a 75% accuracy rate for the 2026 World Cup.
In a year dominated by the World Cup, AI puts the Barcelona starlet at the summit. It stops short of handing him the title.