2025 Women's Rugby World Cup

Last updated
2025 Women's Rugby World Cup
2025 Women's RWC Logo.svg
Tournament details
Host nationFlag of England.svg  England
Dates22 August 2025 – 27 September 2025
No. of nations16
2021
2029

The 2025 Women's Rugby World Cup will be the tenth edition of the women's Rugby World Cup, as organized by World Rugby. It is scheduled to be held in England. [1]

Contents

It will be the second women's Rugby Union World Cup to be hosted by England, after the 2010 edition. It will be the fifth hosted in the British Isles.

The tournament will be expanded to 16 teams, from the 12 which participated in 2021. [2]

New Zealand enter the tournament as defending champions following their victory against England in the 2021 Rugby World Cup Final. [3]

Host selection

On 13 August 2020 World Rugby announced that the hosting rights to the next two world cups, men and women's, would be selected during the same process. [4] These were the 2027 and 2031 men's tournaments and the 2025 and 2029 women's tournaments. The RFU confirmed their intent to bid for the 2025 tournament in October 2021. [5]

World Rugby awarded England preferred candidate status for the 2025 tournament in November 2021. [6] England were confirmed as hosts on 13 May 2022. [7]

Venues

In August 2023, eight venues were confirmed for the 2025 Rugby World Cup. [8] [9]

London Sunderland Brighton and Hove Bristol
Twickenham Stadium Stadium of Light Ashton Gate
Capacity: 82,000Capacity: 49,000Capacity: 31,876Capacity: 27,000
Twickenham Stadium - May 2012 (cropped).jpg Stadium of light Haway the lads.jpg Falmer Stadium - main stand.jpg Ashton Gate - Lansdown Stand (cropped).jpg
Exeter Northampton Manchester York
Sandy Park Franklin's Gardens York Community Stadium
Capacity: 15,600Capacity: 15,249Capacity: 12,000Capacity: 8,500
Sandy Park 3 - geograph-376587 (cropped).jpg Northampton v Worcester 2017 cropped.jpg Salford City Stadium - geograph.org.uk - 3076639 (cropped).jpg LNER Community Stadium (cropped).jpg

Qualifying

The qualification pathway for the competition was confirmed in January 2021. [10]

Tournament hosts England qualify automatically. They will be joined by the teams that reached the semi-final stage of the 2021 Rugby World Cup, who also qualified automatically.

Five places will be decided via regional qualifying competitions: one each for Africa, Oceania, Asia, South America and Europe. One place will also be decided by the results of the Pacific Fours cross-regional competition.

The remaining six places will be awarded via WXV 2024 competition. These places will be awarded to the highest-ranked teams which have not yet qualified by any other method. As there will be no relegation from WXV 1 in the WXV 2023 season, Australia and Wales are already assured of qualification through WXV, should they fail to win their respective regional qualification place.

Qualified teams
RegionTeamQualification
method
Previous
apps
Previous best result World Rugby
Ranking
¹
Africa
Asia
Europe Flag of England.svg  England Hosts + 2021 runners-up 9Champions(1994 ,2014)
Flag of France.svg  France 2021 semi-finalists 9Third place (seven times)
North America Flag of Canada (Pantone).svg  Canada 2021 semi-finalists 9Runners-up (2014)
Oceania Flag of New Zealand.svg  New Zealand 2021 champions 8Champions(six times)
South America

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References

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