Wales men will travel to France at the end of October in our first step towards qualifying for the 2026 Rugby League World Cup in Australia and Papua New Guinea.
We will take part in a straight knock-out tournament, facing Serbia in the semi-final in Carcassonne on Tuesday 22 October. If we win that match, we’ll face the winners of the second semi-final, with is France v Ukraine, on Saturday 26 October in Perpignan.
Both matchdays will be double-headers, with the losers of each semi-final playing a match for world-ranking points before the final.
The winners of the final match on October 26 will then qualify for the inaugural 2025 World Series to face Jamaica, South Africa and Cook Islands. That event will see all four nations play each other once, with the winners and runners-up in the table taking the remaining two berths at the 2026 World Cup.
Wales men last played a full international in the World Cup in 2022, where we performed creditably in a tough group against Tonga, Papua New Guinea and Cook Islands.
Head coach, John Kear, said: “We’re excited by the challenge and opportunity that lies ahead of us in the autumn.
“Whenever a Welshman pulls on that red jersey, they take their performance to another level and that’s what we’ll have to do to be successful in these fixtures. It was fantastic last month, to see our Women’s team qualify for a first-ever World Cup. We’ll be doing everything we can to take one step closer to joining them.”
RLWC2026, which has been awarded to the Australian Rugby League Commission by the IRL Board, will be contested by a total of 26 teams – comprising of 10 men’s, eight women’s and eight wheelchair teams – in October and November 2026. Matches will be staged at first-class rugby league venues in Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Australia, Samoa, New Zealand, England, Lebanon, Tonga, Fiji and Papua New Guinea have already qualified for the men’s tournament after reaching the quarter-final stage of the last World Cup in England in 2022.
The World Cup finals schedule is expected to include double-headers and triple-headers to give fans added value for ticket prices.
Wales’ best performances in the men’s World Cup was in 1995 and 2000 when we reached the semi-finals, both of them under the leadership of Clive Griffiths, who now holds the position of Director of Performance at Wales Rugby League.
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