Market resolves YES if at the beginning of 2026, a new entry has been added to the "major wars" category of the Wikipedia list of ongoing armed conflicts.
This does not need to be an entirely new war. If a war that is already part of the overall list escalates to be included in the "major wars" category, the market resolves as YES. Similarly, if an already ongoing war were to be split into two different conflicts which are then included in the list.
tl;dr: The only criteria for this market to resolve yes is whether a conflict joins the "major wars" category that is not currently listed there.
The market will be resolved once all numbers for 2025 are in (this generally means once ACLED pushes their final update for the year).
Current list:
Update 2025-10-21 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The Wikipedia list changes frequently throughout the year. The market will resolve based on the final state of the list once all 2025 data is complete (after ACLED's final update), not based on intermediate changes during the year.
Update 2025-10-21 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): If a conflict appears in the major wars category that had 10,000+ deaths in 2024 (not 2025), it will likely not qualify as YES since the market asks whether a major war breaks out in 2025. The creator will need to evaluate such cases if they persist through final resolution.
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Some guidance for traders:
Over the last 11 years, at least one new major war has been added to the list in 7 of them. In the past 4 years, at least one new major war has been added during each of them.
2024: 1
2023: 3
2022: 2
2021: 1
2020: 0
2019: 0
2018: 1
2017: 0
2016: 1
2015: 0
2014: 1
@Dulaman it is listed as minor war with 2,628 reported fatalities for 2025, as of today. If they end up reporting >10,000 they will escalate it to major war. You can see the details for each war:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_armed_conflicts#Major_wars_(10,000_or_more_combat-related_deaths_in_current_or_previous_year)
Hi @Symmetry
And
Show up in the Major Wars section right now, but they are not in your 2024 screenshot
Can you resolve YES?
@Symmetry understood, thanks for clarification.
So that I understand better what we are forecasting:
1) We expect this criteria by Wikipedia to continue as it is: "The 8 conflicts in the following list have caused at least 10,000 direct, violent deaths per year in battles between identified groups, in the current or previous calendar year."
2) In early 2026 the Wikipedia major wars section will include the wars with >10,000 direct deaths in 2026 or 2025
@MiguelLM I'm not entirely sure where the confusion lies so let me try to rephrase: The market will resolve YES if at market resolution, there will be any conflict in the major war category that wasn’t there when the market was created. It doesn't matter if it's one or ten new conflicts and it doesn't matter if all other major wars ceased.
As to why the Mexican Drug War is suddenly in there: I don't know. But it happens from time to time. Often, these conflicts disappear from the list at a later revision. If that doesn't happen, I'll have to think about how to handle the situation but it would probably not qualify as a YES since the market clearly asks in its name whether a major war breaks out in 2025 and that is not the case if the 10k deaths occurred in 2024.
@Symmetry clear for Mexico. Even when Mexican Drug War was not in your initial list of wars, you explained that it will not count as a new Major War because it joined the list based on 2024's causalties. Fair enough.
When it comes to Congolese conflict, as the death toll was 4,4K in 2024 but a range of up to >10k in 2025, I assume this war will meet the criteria of "war break out in 2025". We would have to wait for January 2026 to verify if by then it is still listed in the major wars section of the Wikipedia article.
Edit: nevermind, didn't read description
Some guidance for traders:
Over the last 11 years, at least one new major war has been added to the list in 7 of them. In the past 4 years, at least one new major war has been added during each of them.
2024: 1
2023: 3
2022: 2
2021: 1
2020: 0
2019: 0
2018: 1
2017: 0
2016: 1
2015: 0
2014: 1
@Symmetry I would like to ask a clarifying question:
When, for example, the 2024 Iran Israeli conflict was added to the 1948 Arab Israeli conflict, did that count?
The 2023 Sudanese civil war has now been folded into the 2008 Sudanese conflicts, so is the 2008 entry "new", or is it attached to the preexisting 2023 major war?
@JoshuaWilkes That seems to me as if it would only become a problem if a conflict is merged into a conflict that has already been a major conflict, and even then not really. The resolution is agnostic towards whether a conflict is truly "novel" or if it is one that has been going on for some time but is now escalating. Does that answer the question?
@JoshuaWilkes Oh, I missed that. I would say that doesn't qualify just because it doesn't make intuitive sense to me.