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.
Update 2025-12-06 (PST) (AI summary of creator comment): The creator will not make judgment calls about the veracity of casualty data from conflict zones. Resolution will be based on what Wikipedia editors have determined and listed, regardless of whether the underlying citations fully support the numbers.
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 the No holders are irrationally optimistic about Congo being downgraded
resolves YES (EDIT: reading AI clarifications now; should not resolve YES yet)
Somali Civil War is currently at 9981 fatalities in 2025 in the table.
But fair warning, I wouldn't recommend updating upwards too much, since it currently uses an ACLED source, and there is now an RfC* on the talk page about whether the current method should continue.
*Request for Comment: think of it as a Wikipedia subject-specific referendum.
Is there really a 37 % chance that the Congolese conflicts listing will be dropped and/or that the Somali Civil war- which is currently at 9504 deaths in 2025- will not rise to 10000+ come 2026? I feel some traders are misunderstanding the resolution conditions, the market probability is literally below even the base rate most of the time.
@Symmetry would you like to fill the 85% limit order and get the 5 pp gap?
@Symmetry
my odds are lower than 80%
your odds are higher than 90%
I created a NO Limit Order at 85% for 53 Mana
If you buy YES against this limit order, you have the chance to buy YES at a rate cheaper than your expected odds (>=90%), and I will be selling at a price better than my expected odds (<=80%)
@Lilemont Both countries seemed to have a big spike in early 2025 and a downwards trend since then.
The Congo conflict is listed in the Wikipedia article with a range of 6.500 (ACLDE) to 10.000 (other sources). While ACLDE already lists >7K today, it doesn’t seem 2025 will get above 10K in ACLDE. It seems plausible this will be downgraded on Wikipedia the next time they do the 2025 ACLDE review and clean-up.
Somalia is listed in ACLDE as 9.511 for last 12 months, with November 21st data. December 2024 accounts for 412 fatalities, and November 2025 (until 21st) already includes 514. When we have Dec 25 instead of Dec 24 in the 12 months report the number will likely be higher than 9.511.
86% seems reasonable. Note I only listed the major countries. You have to add a few other cases in surrounding countries for the total number of each conflict.
@Lilemont what's odd though is that the 10000+ DRC fatality range has no supporting evidence. None of the DRC citations attached to the 10000+ figure report any fatality estimate in the range of 10,000 almost all of them are reports of single incidents.
Separately, just checked the ACLED database and Somalia fatalities are listed as 9105 as of 2025 on their downloadable dataset for country fatalities. This differs from the 9568 listed directly on the country page. Unclear if this was a correction. I've seen no evidence yet of this 9981 number other than what's listed in wiki.
@Symmetry if it becomes clear that the data reported on the wiki entries are clearly unsupported by their citations or citations are clearly incorrect, does this factor into the resolution?
@Shifbru no, i'm not gonna attempt and make a judgement call about the veracity of casualty data from conflict zones. you'll have to take it up to the wikipedia editors
@Shifbru I got similar concerns and questions with other conflicts.
I see we spent quite a lot of time in several markets discussing this topic. I wonder if it would be a better usage of our time to help Wikipedia to have a timely, transparent update of the conflict data.
Getting familiar with ACLED, doing honest timely updates to Wikipedia and then harvesting the mana in several Manifold markets with early bets seems the smartest and most honest approach for someone who wanted to spend a couple of hours per month tracking a conflict.
@Shifbru I mean, rather than discussing how reliable the Wikipedia data is for each Manifold market, let us make the Wikipedia data accurate and timely and then harvest the Manifold mana according to this reality.
Separately, just checked the ACLED database and Somalia fatalities are listed as 9105 as of 2025 on their downloadable dataset for country fatalities. This differs from the 9568 listed directly on the country page.
The 9.568 in https://acleddata.com/platform/explorer include December 2024. I fall into the same trap the first times I used the site. The "Past Year" filter means "Last 12 months", not "Year to date"
I've seen no evidence yet of this 9981 number other than what's listed in wiki.
The Somalia conflict entry in Wikipedia apparently takes into account an spillover in Keny and some events in Ethiopia, although I think the Ethiopia fatalities are not from 2025. I don't really get how they got the data, don't ask me for that.
@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)
@Dulaman there was a Wikipedian updating the Pakistan insurgencies data through October and November. I suspect if they reviewed the Pakistan figures, they probably updated also Pakistan-Afganistan recently
You can go to the history tab and try to figure out how old is the data.
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.