New Qualification Pathway for Women's Rugby World Cup 2025

(28 Jan 2022)  World Rugby has unveiled details of the qualification pathway for the Women's Rugby World Cup 2025 as the tournament expands to 16 teams.

Under the new pathway, the WRWC 2025 host nation will automatically qualify for the tournament with the four WRWC 2021 semi-finals also securing direct qualification to the pinnacle event.

Should the host nation of WRWC 2025 be a semi-finalist of WRWC 2021 and win, only the remaining three teams will qualify for WRWC 2025.

The next six teams will qualify via regional competitions by 2024, with winners in Asia, Africa, Europe, Oceania, South America and the newly established cross-regional competition, the Pacific Four Series, securing direct qualification.

Women's Rugby World Cup

Should the host nation of WRWC 2025 win their respective regional competition, the next best placed team in that region will secure direct qualification.

The final opportunity to qualify for WRWC 2025 will come via WXV, the new three tiered annual women’s 15s competition, with at least the top five ranked non-qualified teams at the end of WXV 2024 qualifying for the tournament.

With WXV acting as a qualification pathway for the Women's Rugby World Cup to provide teams from all regions additional qualification opportunities, WXV 3 will expand from four to six teams and will now be made up of two teams from Europe and one from Asia, Oceania, Africa and South America.

 “As Rugby World Cup 2025 expands from 12 to 16 teams we are committed to ensuring that the qualification process also evolves to ensure a fair and certain pathway that provides teams with more opportunities to qualify for the pinnacle event,” said Women's Rugby World Cup 2021 Tournament Director, Alison Hughes. “With the inclusion of WXV as part of the qualification pathway, this not only streamlines the qualification process and reduces the necessity for additional qualification tournaments within the new women’s international calendar, but it will also make the WXV competition even more competitive and brings new meaning as it now provides a final opportunity for all non-qualified teams worldwide to secure their place at Rugby World Cup 2025.”

The Rugby World Cup 2025 host will be confirmed by the World Rugby Council at its Annual Meeting of Council in May of this year. England is the preferred candidate.

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