Where will 2026 rank among the hottest years on record?

The strongest recent forecasts lean against 2026 becoming the hottest year on record. Carbon Brief’s latest analysis puts the chance of beating 2024 at 35%, while Berkeley Earth’s estimate is even lower at 12% and says second place is the most likely outcome. Those estimates matter because they are explicitly based on the same kind of global temperature datasets the market will ultimately use, so they are directly relevant to the resolution question.

The main argument for Yes is that 2026 is still tracking extremely warm and remains close enough to 2024 that a strong second half could flip the ranking. Carbon Brief cites a developing El Niño as an important upward driver, and its own modeling still assigns a meaningful chance of a new record. The market also sits in a world where recent years have already been exceptionally hot, which reduces the margin between first and second place and leaves room for a late-year surge to matter.

The main argument against Yes is that the best-supported central forecast is not a record, but second place. Multiple recent outlooks describe 2026 as likely to land around 1.47°C to 1.51°C above pre-industrial levels, which is warm enough to be near the top of the historical list but not necessarily above 2024. The news summary also says updated data through early July reinforced the view that 2026 is tracking toward second place, which weakens the case that the market should trade near 50-50.

Market pricing is somewhat more optimistic on Yes than the forecast consensus. At 44.5%, the market is implying a materially higher chance of a record than Carbon Brief’s 35% and much higher than Berkeley Earth’s 12%, though still below the most bullish dataset-specific estimates mentioned in the broader commentary. On balance, the evidence supports a modest No lean rather than a strong conviction, because the path to a record exists but requires a late and unusually strong warm-up that is not the base case.