I put up two new questions on the Sudan Metaculus community page, focused on whether Burhan and Hemedti will meet in person this year and whether any major publication will estimate Sudan-war excess mortality above 200,000 in 2026. Both open tomorrow.

Will Burhan and Hemedti be publicly confirmed to have met in person in 2026?

This is a binary YES/NO question.

Opens: April 27, 2026. Closes: December 31, 2026.

Background: Lt Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (SAF) and Lt Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo "Hemedti" (RSF) have not been publicly confirmed in the same room since shortly before the war began on April 15, 2023. Several mediation attempts have collapsed: a planned Djibouti meeting in late 2023, the IGAD Kampala summit in January 2024, Ethiopian mediation in mid-2024. The current Quad track (US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt) issued a roadmap on September 12, 2025; Burhan rejected it on sight, and Sudan formally rejected it at the UN Security Council on February 24, 2026.

Resolution criteria: Resolves YES if, at any point in 2026, the two are reported to have been physically present in the same room at the same time, confirmed by at least two of Reuters, AP, AFP, BBC, or Al Jazeera, plus at least one official channel (either side's spokesman, the host government, or a principal mediator: US, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, AU, UN, or IGAD), with the meeting dated and located in public reporting. Brief summit encounters with photographic evidence qualify. Video calls, phone calls, and shuttle mediation in separate rooms do not.

Will any peer-reviewed paper or major-organization publication issued in 2026 estimate Sudan-war excess mortality above 200,000?

This is a binary YES/NO question.

Opens: April 27, 2026. Closes: December 31, 2026.

Background: Nationwide excess-mortality estimates for the Sudan war remain scarce. The most-cited public anchor is roughly 150,000 deaths, attributed to US Special Envoy Tom Perriello in May 2024. The most rigorous published work to date is the LSHTM Sudan Research Group's capture-recapture study in Lancet Global Health (2025), which estimated about 61,000 all-cause deaths in Khartoum State alone for April 2023 through June 2024. The group has flagged a nationwide extension; whether it lands in calendar 2026 is part of what this question is asking.

Resolution criteria: Resolves YES if any of the following appears in 2026 with a central estimate above 200,000 covering Sudan nationwide: a peer-reviewed article in a PubMed-indexed medical or epidemiological journal; a working paper or preprint by a named academic group with university affiliation; a formal UN body publication; a formal report from a major NGO with stated methodology; a national government modelled figure; or a documented release of CRED EM-DAT or Uppsala UCDP listing a Sudan-war cumulative total above the threshold. The estimate must include both direct and indirect deaths. Op-eds, secondary reporting, and direct-fatality-only counts do not qualify.

I would appreciate your feedback and your forecasts.

Notes:

  1. Previous questions: (1) How many internally displaced people will Sudan have on January 31, 2026? (2) Will SAF and RSF delegations both physically attend the same peace negotiation venue before December 31, 2025? (3) How many cumulative suspected cholera cases will be reported in the next WHO Sudan Health Cluster bulletin? (4) Will Sudan's Emergency Response Rooms win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2026?