Bob Dylan fans are running a World Cup bracket for his album releases — the quarter-finals start today

Bob Dylan fans have found themselves with World Cup fever and launched a bracket for his albums. With the 2026 FIFA World Cup entering the semi-final stage, Dylan fans have a little catching up to do. X user DylanRevisited launched the tournament earlier this month and used Dylan’s 40 studio albums, along with eight live albums and Bootleg Series entries, to produce a bracket which has fans voting for their favourite album and progressing it to the next round.

With the quarter-finals set to start today (July 12), fans will be wondering which albums are left and what the organiser believes is the favourite. The idea came about because it was a “meeting of my twin obsessions,” Colm Larkin, the man behind DylanRevisited, said. He told Cult Following: “It was a meeting of my twin obsessions. As someone who has written a book about Bob Dylan, runs a blog, hosts podcasts and has several social media accounts dedicated to him and his music, I’m obviously a Dylan fanatic. Well, every four years, the World Cup occupies that same part of my brain.

“When I was at university, I wrote a thesis that was centred around the 1998 World Cup. In 2010, I spent the month of the South Africa World Cup writing about the tournament for Bleacher Report. I always like to have some small involvement in the World Cup beyond just watching it on TV. 

“As the 2026 tournament approached, I started thinking about if I could somehow tie it into something Bob Dylan. But I don’t think he’s ever had any connection with or made any reference to what Americans call soccer. All of the ‘football’ mentions in his lyrics are about the US’s shoulder pads and Hail Mary passes version. Besides, Dylan is much more of a baseball and boxing guy. 

“Then when thinking about how the football World Cup has been expanded to 48 teams, I realised that with 40 studio albums to his name, Dylan could match the format, especially with the wealth of live albums and Bootleg Series releases that I could use to make up the numbers. I

“I’ve seen similar types of World Cups play out on social media around different topics and they always seem like a fun way to get people talking. So I went ahead and launched the Bob Dylan World Cup. Thankfully, people have been voting, commenting and generally enjoying the whole thing.”

Hundreds have since gotten involved in the tournament which has seen the likes of Rough and Rowdy Ways, John Wesley Harding, and New Morning progress through group stages that featured some of Dylan’s least-known and worst albums. Those lesser albums were hardly ever going to get out of the group, as Colm outlined.

“Like in the football World Cup, it’s actually pretty hard to be eliminated at the group stage, as only 16 of the 48 records went out,” Colm explained. “Many of the obvious candidates fell – a lot of 80s records, Bob’s Christmas album, etc. One surprise for me was Shadow Kingdom, Dylan’s 2023 reimagining of his older songs, which I really love.

“I was also disappointed to lose Before the Flood, as this was the first Dylan album I ever heard, so I will always have a fondness for it. Some records that had a lot of vocal support from people in my mentions but failed to pick up enough votes to get through were Empire Burlesque, Saved and Triplicate.”

While Colm has tipped Highway 61 Revisited to win the tournament, he did note a few surprises elsewhere in the groups. The 2009 album Together Through Life made a stunning impression on fans and made it out of the group stage despite being in the fourth seed.

Colm said: “It’s a record that has largely passed me by, so I was surprised to see a decent swell of support for it. Maybe the biggest surprises have been the vehement and vocal support for some of the records that didn’t win, especially in the knockout rounds. Like Tempest, which was eliminated by New Morning – lots of people were really annoyed by that. Or the person who described The Basement Tapes losing to Bootleg Vol 1-3 as a ‘travesty’. I like it when emotions run high.”

Emotions are set to run high still as the quarter-finals are set to get underway later today. The bracket is modelled on the World Cup too, with the 12 groups of four seeing the top two albums qualifying for the knockouts, wihile the eight best-performing third-place albums also get through.

Colm added: “The group stage was seeded, so I arranged all the records into four pots, with pot 1 made up of what are generally regarded as Dylan’s best albums and pot 4 being the typically lower-ranked records. I based this on what I perceived to be the consensus, with a few personal preferences thrown in, especially when differentiating between pots 2 and 3. Then I did a random draw to place one team from each of the four pots into a group. The only other caveat was that no group could have more than two records from the same decade.”

The sheer variety of albums on offer in the tournament, pairing the likes of New Morning with Tempest for instance, has highlighted the sheer depth of Dylan’s discography to many who are playing along on this World Cup. Colm addeed: “The thing with Dylan is that he has made so much music over such a long period of time that people fall in love with different eras for different reasons.

“And there’s definitely been a shift to championing the post-1960s era among some fans – what is known as ‘Jokerman mindset’ – which means you get a result like Street-Legal knocking out Another Side of Bob Dylan in the round of 32. It’s great to see such diversity of opinion and I love watching people debate their picks in my mentions. I also like it when people say they will relisten to a record they had previously dismissed based on someone else’s comment. 

“Ultimately that’s what it’s all about. Bob Dylan is a rare artist in that he has continually made interesting music for more than 60 years and even his lower-ranked records usually have a song or two that are worth your time. Ranking art is very, very silly, or to quote AJ Weberman – infamous for spending the 70s digging through Bob Dylan’s rubbish – who tweeted me to call this tournament ‘childish bubble gum cards.’ He meant it as an insult but kinda nailed it. The football World Cup never fails to bring out the obsessed kid in me. And I’m delighted that so many people have been enjoying the Bob Dylan World Cup and using it as an excuse to dig back into their record collections.”