Welcome to the Metaculus Cup! Join us and make quick predictions on topical questions and compete for a $5,000 prize pool. Each week, a few new questions will be available to forecast on. We welcome both new and experienced forecasters to participate. Beginners can learn how Metaculus works while veterans can showcase their expertise. Feel free to try your hand at question writing too!

Each Friday, at 17:00 UTC, an average of 4 questions will be set to Upcoming, opening three days later, so that forecasters can prepare and give feedback on the questions. Breaking news might result in additional questions being launched during the week. Questions will frequently close early, but some might remain open for the whole duration of the tournament.

Prize Structure

This tournament features a $5,000 prize divided into two distinct prize pools:

A Forecasting Prize ($3,500) that will be based on our usual time-averaged scores. (Learn more about forecast scoring here.)

A Commenting Prize ($1,500) that will be distributed to the 10 best comments made on Metaculus Cup questions before the end of the tournament. Metaculus will choose top comments that best showcase some or all of the following traits:

Provides clear and insightful reasoning.
Provides valuable information.
Identifies a mistake in the community's prediction or makes a strong case for a different prediction than the community's.
The comment identifies key factors and the commenter submits these using the new key factors feature.
The comment receives "Changed My Mind" votes or key factors produced via the comment are rated as significant by the community.

Comments do not need to make a forecast that turns out to be accurate, even if a comment argues for a forecast that ends up directionally incorrect we will evaluate the comment based primarily on the strength of its reasoning.

Prizes will be awarded to the top rated comments as shown below. Individual commenters can receive multiple prizes, but will be will be capped so that an individual does not receive additional prizes below the prize rank that first reaches or surpasses $750 in total winnings.

1st: $300
2nd: $250
3rd: $200
4th: $150
5th-10th: $100

Get started below!