Supercomputer · Brasileirão B

Plays the rest of the season 10,000 times and shows how often each club wins.

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Série B 2026: promotion no longer stops at fourth place

Série B changed shape this year. For two decades the top four went up automatically; from 2026 only the champion and runner-up are promoted on points after 38 rounds, while third through sixth enter two-legged play-offs — third against sixth, fourth against fifth — for the two remaining Série A places, decided in late November.

That makes the sixth-place line the one to watch on this page. A club projected fourth is no longer promoted, only seeded into a tie it can still lose, and if a play-off finishes level on aggregate there is no shoot-out: the better league record goes through. Four clubs still drop to Série C.

Série B promotion: the questions people ask

How many teams are promoted from Série B in 2026?

Four in total, but only two directly. The champion and runner-up go up on points. The clubs finishing third to sixth then play home-and-away ties in late November — third versus sixth and fourth versus fifth — and the two winners take the remaining places in Série A.

What happens if a promotion play-off ends level?

There are no penalties. If the two legs finish level on aggregate, the club with the better record across the 38-round regular season advances. Third and fourth place therefore carry a real reward beyond simply reaching the bracket, which is worth weighing when you read the projected standings.

Does this projection include the promotion play-offs?

No. The model simulates the 38-round table, not the knockout ties that follow it. Read the top-six figure as the chance of reaching the promotion bracket at all, and the first-place figure as the chance of going up as champion. What happens inside those two-legged ties sits outside the simulation.

▸How does the supercomputer work?

Every remaining fixture is simulated with a Poisson model: each club gets an attack rating and a defence rating from the goals it has scored and conceded this season, and the expected goals of a match come from combining one side's attack with the other's defence, plus a moderate home advantage.

Before a ball is kicked the model does not start from zero: each club begins with a prior strength built from last season's finish and the market value of its squad, with the tails capped so no extreme is absurd. That starting point hands over weight to real results as they arrive, and by around matchday ten only the actual goals are talking.

The remaining season is played 10,000 times in a separate browser process, so the page never freezes. The title, top-four, top-six and relegation percentages are simply how often each outcome happened across those 10,000 seasons, and each club's points range covers the central 90% of its simulated finishes.

What the model does not know: injuries, transfers, sanctions, European fixtures or motivation. It uses goals and only goals — which is why it is in beta.