2026 Hatsu Banzuke prediction results - Not bad, not bad
The New Year rankings are out, let's see how close they were to my predictions.
The hatsu basho (New Year Tournament) will be quickly upon us. So quick, in fact, that I need to write extra quickly if I want to get all my Kyushu recap posts out in time. I know, I know, me getting stuff in right under the wire is nothing new.
Today I have a recap regarding my hatsu basho banzuke prediction. Check that out below and some analysis where I chat about what the JSA decided to do and how that might have differed from what I was predicting. My prediction post is available here, in case you want to read that first:
Also, if you’d like to read a long recap of this year in sumo, check out my piece over on MMA Mania (link). The MMA world is mostly dormant right now, so my awesome boss over at Mania let me go long on the best sport out there.
Bonus gif today represents perhaps my favourite rivalry in sumo right now.
The 2026 hatsu banzuke came out last week and there weren’t too many surprises on it. I did pretty well with picking it this time and was mostly right on most the ranks. There were one or two I was way off on, though.
Here’s the entire actual banzuke, with some extra columns for past records, net wins and rank changes.
The green highlights represent where I was exactly right with my prediction. Yellow highlights mean I was half a rank off (M1e instead of M1w, for example). Orange means I was a single rank off. And red means I was off by more than that.
I was exactly right on fifteen wrestlers and was within half a rank for thirteen of them. I was way off on six predictions. This is pretty true to form for me, I was right, or within a half rank, on 26 guys and off on six last time, too.
Below is my full banzuke prediction, for comparison’s sake.
Just like with Kyushu, the middle of the banzuke proved difficult to forecast due to a glut of underperformers who needed big demotions and a lack of lower ranked guys who did well enough to totally justify big promotions. Even so, I’m pretty happy with how I did.
Let’s get into some specifics.
Yokozuna, Ōzeki and san’yaku
The tippy top of the banzuke was easy to figure out. Hōshōryū switched places with Ōnosato on the virtue of being the yokozuna with the best record in Kyushu. Aonishiki was promoted to ōzeki, so he moved up and took the vacant spot on the west side of the banzuke.
I was wrong about the sekiwake ranks. …
