The 2026 World Cup final settled last night. While it played, our recorders were doing what they've done since June 20: writing down the top 20 levels of the Polymarket order book, roughly every 30 seconds, for every listed match market it knew about.
Polymarket doesn't sell or retain this historical order-book archive — once a snapshot passes, the exact past book state cannot be requested from its API. (We explain why order-book history is non-reconstructable after the fact, and if you're weighing vendors — ours included — our comparison of where to get historical Polymarket and Kalshi order-book data covers the alternatives.) What we captured is a roughly 30-second snapshot record of how a prediction market priced the first 48-team World Cup, and as of today it's a $39 archive: FIFA World Cup 2026 — Polymarket Order-Book Archive.
What the market did during the final
Numbers straight from the archive (all times UTC, Jul 19):
- Pre-kickoff (18:00–19:00), the 3-way market priced Spain 42.6%, Draw 32.0%, Argentina 26.1% — with a total book overround of just 0.6%. Tight pricing for a market this size.
- In play, Spain's leg traded as high as 47.5% and as low as 4.1%. Argentina's ranged 25.6% down to 0.4%.
- By 21:20, the Draw leg had swept to 0.996 — regulation ended level, and the 90-minute match-winner market settled accordingly. (Who lifted the trophy after that is a different market; this one's story ends at full time.)
- The final alone accounts for 1,010,983 L2 depth rows in the archive; we kept recording through settlement, with the last book snapshot at 22:58 UTC.
What's in the archive — and what isn't
47 of the 104 match markets Polymarket listed: 20.8M L2 depth rows plus 955K top-of-book snapshots. That includes 38 group-stage matches (Jun 20–28) and the complete knockout run from the quarterfinals through the semifinals, the third-place match, and the final.
It does not include Jun 11–19 (our capture started Jun 20) or the round
of 32 (a market-discovery bug on our side, fixed Jul 8). Every included and
excluded match is listed in the COVERAGE.md that ships in the zip —
you'll know exactly what you're buying before you pay, because that's how
we'd want to be sold data.
Try before you buy
A complete group match — Norway vs. France, 872K depth rows — is free: grab the sample and schema docs, or start from the product page. Per-match parquet files, a full manifest, and the honest coverage map.
As always: this is research and backtest data, not a trading signal. The 0.6% overround above is the market telling you it's efficient — we publish that finding rather than hide it.