What if think tanks had a World Cup?

This article is a part of a 2-part series on the World Cup of Think Tanks. Read the second article here.

Every four years, the World Cup gives us a map of the world. Not a complete one, of course. Footballing success depends on talent, investment, institutions, history, politics, luck and the strange drama of qualification. But it offers a recognisable global frame: regions, slots, qualifiers, surprises, absences and debates about who deserves to be there.

So I wondered: what would a World Cup of think tanks look like?

Not a ranking. Not an attempt to decide who is “the best”. That would be the wrong question. Think tanks operate in very different political, financial and institutional contexts. Some work in large, well-funded ecosystems. Others work in polarised, under-resourced or even hostile environments. Some are highly visible internationally. Others are deeply embedded domestically but almost invisible beyond their country or language.

Still, the exercise is useful – and fun?

Using the Open Think Tank Directory, we can imagine a “Think Tank World Cup” in which countries qualify not by goals scored, but by the number of think tanks and policy research organisations listed in the Directory. Then we can compare that fictional tournament with the actual 2026 FIFA World Cup.+

For a better alternative to a think tank ranking or competition visit OTT’s 100 Think Tanks to Watch list: an opportunity to celebrate and learn from creative and impactful think tank across the world. 

The point is not to crown a champion. It is to ask what visibility tells us about the global distribution of policy research capacity. 

A note on the data 

This exercise is based on data from the Open Think Tank Directory. The Directory is not complete. It is a living database, dependent on public information, submissions, updates and the ability of the OTT team and partners to identify organisations across countries, languages and political contexts. 

Please explore the directory and if your think tank is not in it or its data is out of date, please let us know!

So the numbers should not be read as a definitive census of think tanks in the world. 

They are, however, a useful indication of visible think tank ecosystems. They show where think tanks are more easily identifiable, where there are denser communities of policy research organisations, and where the Directory itself may need to improve its coverage. 

In other words, this is not a measure of quality or influence. It is a measure of visible institutional density. 

The rules of the game 

For this thought experiment, I used the 2026 FIFA World Cup format: 48 countries, distributed according to FIFA’s regional qualification structure. 

To keep the comparison simple, I allocated places by confederation: Asia, Africa, North and Central America and the Caribbean, South America, Oceania and Europe. Then, within each region, I selected the countries with the highest number of organisations listed in the Open Think Tank Directory. 

This gives us a fictional tournament: the countries that would qualify if World Cup places were awarded to the countries with the largest visible think tank ecosystems in each region. 

There is one important technical caveat. The Directory lists the United Kingdom as one country, while FIFA treats England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland separately. For the purposes of the Think Tank World Cup, the UK qualifies as one country – sorry Scotland. 

The Think Tank World Cup qualifiers 

If places were allocated by the number of think tanks listed in the Directory, the 2026 Think Tank World Cup would include the following countries: 

Some of these are unsurprising. The United States, Germany, China, the United Kingdom, France, India and Brazil all have large, visible think tank communities in the Directory. They would be the equivalent of football’s traditional heavyweights. 

But the comparison also produces some interesting differences. 

China and India would be major Asian qualifiers in a Think Tank World Cup, although they are absent from the actual 2026 football World Cup. Peru and Chile would qualify comfortably from South America, while footballing powers such as Uruguay, Ecuador and Paraguay would miss out. Italy, absent again from the actual football World Cup, would return immediately in a think tank version. Kenya and Nigeria would be strong African qualifiers, while several actual football qualifiers from the continent would not make it on Directory numbers alone. 

What the comparison reveals 

The first lesson is that think tank visibility does not follow footballing geography. 

Some countries that are central to global football are not especially prominent in the Directory. Others that rarely appear in major football tournaments have large and visible policy research communities. The infrastructure of ideas follows different historical, political, and institutional paths from those of sport. 

The second lesson is that size matters, but it is not everything. 

Countries with larger economies, larger populations, stronger university sectors, more philanthropic or donor funding, and a longer history of organised policy research are more likely to have many think tanks. But this does not mean their think tanks are necessarily more influential, more trusted or more relevant. A country with 15 organisations may have a stronger policy research ecosystem than one with 80, depending on how those organisations relate to government, political parties, the media, civil society, universities, and the public. 

The third lesson is that the visibility of think tanks in the Directory is uneven. 

The Directory almost certainly captures some countries better than others. English-speaking organisations, internationally networked organisations and those with stronger websites are easier to find and classify. Organisations working in less visible languages, outside capital cities, or in constrained civic spaces may be undercounted. This means the “Think Tank World Cup” is also a mirror held up to the Directory itself. Where are we overcounting? Where are we undercounting? Which countries need better coverage? Which organisations should update their profiles? 

The fourth lesson is that regional balance matters. 

If the Think Tank World Cup were based only on the countries with the most organisations globally, it would be dominated by North America, Europe and a handful of large Asian and Latin American countries. The use of FIFA-style regional slots forces us to see a more diverse global field. It creates space for countries such as Kenya, Ghana, Morocco, the Philippines, Pakistan, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Bolivia and New Zealand. 

That is a useful reminder for global policy debates. Without deliberate regional balance, visibility tends to reproduce existing concentrations of money, language and power. 

The final whistle 

A World Cup of think tanks would be a terrible way to study or celebrate think tanks. 

But it may be a very good way to start a conversation about the global distribution of policy research capacity. 

It reminds us that the think tank world is much larger and more diverse than the usual global conference circuit suggests. It shows the importance of regional balance, reveals concentrations of visibility,  highlights gaps in our data and it invites think tanks themselves to help us build a better map. 

So, if your organisation is not in the Open Think Tank Directory, add it. 

If your profile is out of date, update it. 

And if your country would not yet qualify for the Think Tank World Cup, perhaps the problem is not that the ecosystem is weak. Perhaps we simply do not know it well enough yet.