2026 Rugby League World Cup — Qualification
How all ten teams at the 2026 Rugby League World Cup earned their place, from automatic qualification through to the final 2025 playoff matches.
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
2026 Rugby League World Cup qualification: 8 teams qualified automatically as 2021/2022 quarter-finalists; France and the Cook Islands won through a separate playoff process to complete the 10-team field.
Automatic qualifiers
The eight teams that reached the quarter-finals of the 2021/2022 World Cup all qualified automatically for 2026 without needing to enter a separate qualifying process. Those quarter-finals, played in early November 2022, were: Australia beat Lebanon 48-4, England beat Papua New Guinea 46-6, New Zealand beat Fiji 24-18, and Samoa beat Tonga 20-18.
Continental qualifying
Only full International Rugby League (IRL) member nations were eligible to enter qualifying at all — a rule that excluded affiliate members, including Ireland, from the process entirely (see Ireland's nation page for the background on that reclassification). Three confederations settled their representative by direct advancement rather than a playing tournament: the Cook Islands advanced from Asia-Pacific, Jamaica advanced from the Americas, and South Africa advanced from Middle East-Africa. Only Europe actually played a qualifying tournament, in October 2024: France beat Ukraine 74-8 in the semi-final and then beat Wales 48-6 in the final to take the European confederation's place forward, a result that also underlined just how far ahead of Wales and the rest of the European second tier the French national side had pulled by that point.
Final playoffs
A planned 2025 'World Series' play-in event was scrapped after no host bids materialised, and replaced with two single-elimination playoff matches to decide the tournament's final two places. In the Northern Hemisphere playoff, France beat Jamaica 20-0; in the Southern Hemisphere playoff, the Cook Islands beat South Africa 38-0. France and the Cook Islands took the two remaining 2026 World Cup places as a result, completing the ten-team field alongside the eight automatic qualifiers.
Sources
← 2026 Rugby League World Cup preview
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