2025 Rugby League World Cup
The 2025 Rugby League World Cup will be the seventeenth staging of the Rugby League World Cup and will be held in France in October and November 2025. The tournament will include the men's, women's, wheelchair and youth competitions. There will be 16 teams playing in the men's, women's, youth (Under-19) and wheelchair competitions. Host selection. After the U.S. lost the 2021 Rugby League World Cup bid to England, the Rugby League International Federation (RLIF) recommended that the United States and Canada should host the 2025 event after an impressive bid  by Moore Sports International. The RLIF Congress reviewed that recommendation at a meeting in November 2016. On 20 November, it was announced that the North America bid had won the rights to host the 2025 World Cup. This would have been the first time the tournament was held outside of Europe and Oceania. On December 4, 2018, plans for the World Cup to be held in North America were scrapped due to financial concerns and that the location of the 2025 Rugby League World Cup would be determined by a new bidding process in 2019. In March 2021, it was  reported that France is the preferred destination for the 2025 Rugby League World Cup. France officially lodged a bid later that year, in July. In January 2022, France won the bid to host the world cup. The official announcement announcing France as the host nation was made on 11 January 2022 by French prime minister, Jean Castex. It is intended that the tournament will be played at 40 cities across France during October and November 2025. Qualification. There will be 16 teams in the men's tournament. The organisers announced in March 2022 that all eight countries that reach the  quarter-finals of the 2021 competition will qualify for 2025 and another 27 countries will enter the qualifying tournament. European countries will take between six and eight of the 16 places, Asia and Pacific region countries between five and seven, North and South American countries two places and Middle East and African countries one or two places. The teams that have qualified so far are: Cities and venues. It was confirmed that the majority of games will be played in medium-sized cities, with finals matches to be played in cities such as Paris, Marseille, Lyon and Toulouse. 2025 Rugby