Rugby League World Cup Qualifiers
The Rugby League World Cup qualification is the process a national team goes through to qualify for the Rugby League World Cup Finals.
Qualifying rounds were first introduced for the 2000 World Cup to reflect the recent expansion of the tournament.
From 2017-2026 hosts and teams reaching the knockout rounds of the previous tournament automatically qualified for the next edition. After RLWC 2026, IRL World Rankings are being introduced as a pre-qualifying mechanism. The remaining berths are achieved through regional qualification tournaments, split between the four International Rugby League regional areas, Asia-Pacific, Americas, Europe, and Middle East-Africa, and the IRL Rugby League World Series.
2018 Americas Championship
2018 European Championship (Euro A)
In Europe qualifying operated on three levels in 2018. The 2018 European Championship (Euro A) was contested between France, Wales, Scotland and Ireland who played each other once each with the teams finishing in 1st and 2nd in the league progressing to the World Cup. With France topping the table and Wales as runners-up progressing to the World Cup, Scotland and Ireland moved into the following year’s European repechage tournament.
2018 Euro B
The Euro B competition, contested by Russia, Serbia and Spain would see the top two nations proceed to the European repechage in 2019. With each team winning one game each, Russia and Spain finished 1st and 2nd respectively based on points difference to have a second chance in 2019.
2018 Euro C
Meanwhile, Euro C, played in two pools of three with each team playing each other once. The north division, contested by Czechia, Germany and Norway was extremely competitive with each team winning one game and Norway narrowly topping the table on points difference. In the south division, Greece came out on top after wins over Malta and Ukraine. Greece and Norway met in London in early 2019, with Greece winning 56-26 to secure their place in the European repechage later that year.
2019 European repechage
The European repechage tournament took place in 2019, with Italy the 6th team to take part. Group A was contested by Ireland, Italy and Spain and Group B contested by Scotland, Greece and Serbia (who replaced Russia after their withdrawal, with the two top teams in each group earning qualification to the World Cup. Scotland and Ireland both won two games in their respective groups to qualify for the World Cup, with Italy and Greece qualifying as the second placed teams to complete Europe’s entries.
2019 Inter-regional repechage
In the Middle East & Africa region, as Lebanon had earned automatic qualification, only South Africa remained who proceeded to the inter-regional repechage series.
The inter-regional repechage series took place in 2019, with Cook Islands hosting and beating South Africa 66-6 in Sydney in June before Cook Islands travelled to the USA and recorded a 38-16 victory to secure the final berth at the 2021 event.
