Generalizing the method of Faltings-Serre, we rigorously verify that certain abelian surfaces without extra endomorphisms are paramodular. To compute the required Hecke eigenvalues, we develop a method of specialization of Siegel paramodular forms to modular curves.Date: August 10, 2018. 2010 Mathematics Subject Classification. 11F46, 11Y40.1 is made precise by a conjecture of Brumer-Kramer [8, Conjecture 1.1], restricted here for simplicity.Conjecture 1.1.1 (Brumer-Kramer). To every abelian surface A over Q of conductor N with End(A) = Z, there exists a cuspidal, nonlift Siegel paramodular newform f of degree 2, weight 2, and level N with rational Hecke eigenvalues, such thatMoreover, f is unique up to (nonzero) scaling and depends only on the isogeny class of A; and if N is squarefree, then this association is bijective.Conjecture 1.1.1 is often referred to as the paramodular conjecture. As pointed out by Frank Calegari, in general it is necessary to include abelian fourfolds with quaternionic multiplication for the converse assertion: for a precise statement for arbitrary N and further discussion, see Brumer-Kramer [7, Section 8].Extensive experimental evidence [8,47] supports Conjecture 1.1.1. There is also theoretical evidence for this conjecture when the abelian surface A is potentially of GL 2 -type, acquiring extra endomorphisms over a quadratic field: see Johnson-Leung-Roberts [34] for real quadratic fields and Berger-Dembélé-Pacetti-Şengün [5] for imaginary quadratic fields. For a complete treatment of the many possibilities for the association of modular forms to abelian surfaces with potentially extra endomorphisms, see work of Booker-Sijsling-Sutherland-Voight-Yasaki [11]. What remains is the case where End(A Q al ) = Z, which is to say that A has minimal endomorphisms defined over the algebraic closure Q al ; we say then that A is typical. (We do not say generic, since it is not a Zariski open condition on the moduli space.)Recently, there has been dramatic progress in modularity lifting theorems for nonlift Siegel modular forms (i.e., forms not of endoscopic type): see Pilloni [44] for p-adic overconvergent modularity lifting, as well as recent work by Calegari-Geraghty [12, §1.2], Berger-Klosin with Poor-Shurman-Yuen [2] establishing modularity in the reducible case when certain congruences are provided, and a paper in preparation by Boxer-Calegari-Gee-Pilloni [6] establishing potential modularity over totally real fields. 1.2. Main result. For all prime levels N < 277, the paramodular conjecture is known: there are no paramodular forms of the specified type by work of Poor-Yuen [47, Theorem 1.2], and correspondingly there are no abelian surfaces by work of Brumer-Kramer [8, Proposition 1.5]. At level N = 277, there exists a cuspidal, nonlift Siegel paramodular cusp form, unique up to scalar multiple, by work of Poor-Yuen [47, Theorem 1.3]: this form is given explicitly as a rational function in Gritsenko lifts of ten weight 2 theta blocks-see (6.2.2).Our main result is as follows. Theorem 1.2.1. ...