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arXiv · 2609.12495

Information Specialization and Constrained Synthesis in Multi-Agent LLM Forecasting: A Prospective Live-Study of the 2026 FIFA World Cup

Julian Varghese·Lucas Bickmann·Sarah Sandmann
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Abstract

Large language models are being organized into multi-agent systems with specialized roles, but whether such specialization produces distinct forecasts and whether subsequent synthesis improves utility remains unclear. In this study, we carried out a live, prospective evaluation over the final 56 matches of the information-dense 2026 FIFA World Cup, keeping a frontier foundation model constant while assigning two primary forecasting agents contrasting specialist roles: a quantitative specialist focusing on structured performance statistics and a news specialist focusing on current injuries, tactics and information from press conferences. Their forecasts were then reviewed by a separate critic before being combined by a meta-agent, resulting in a sequential four-agent model. Forecasts from the betting market served as an external benchmark. The news specialist obtained the highest mean probability-weighted Top-3 utility and matched the betting market in Top-3 exact-score hits. Nevertheless, the two specialist forecasters agreed on at least two of the three scorelines in 50 out of 56 matches, and the meta-agent never generated more than one scoreline outside the specialists' forecast set. These findings show that rapidly changing, unstructured information can provide a valuable forecasting signal alongside structured statistics, whereas adding critic and meta-agent stages does not necessarily create complementary information or improve on the strongest specialist.

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Julian Varghese, Lucas Bickmann, Sarah Sandmann. 2026-09-11. Information Specialization and Constrained Synthesis in Multi-Agent LLM Forecasting: A Prospective Live-Study of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12495

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