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2030 Rugby League World Cup heads to USA and Pacific Islands, with host cities still to be named

Carys BevanPublished 3m ago2 min readBased on 2 sources
2030 Rugby League World Cup heads to USA and Pacific Islands, with host cities still to be named
Photo by Max Leveridge on Unsplash

The 2030 Rugby League World Cup will be held in the USA and the Pacific Islands, but the five host cities have yet to be confirmed. BBC Sport reported the details on Monday 9 November.

Rugby league is the 13-a-side code, where teams keep the ball by moving it forward through sets of six tackles. The men's tournament is set to grow from 10 teams to 12. The women's event will expand from eight teams to 10. Both tournaments will run at the same time, which means fans can follow men's and women's matches across the same stretch of the calendar.

The 2030 Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup will also run alongside the main event, but it will be staged in France. The sport's next showpiece after that, in 2034, will be hosted in Europe.

The International Rugby League has also proposed a change to the top table. Tier One is the group of strongest nations, currently Australia, England and New Zealand. The governing body has suggested adding Samoa and Tonga to that group. Samoa became the first Pacific country to play in a Rugby League World Cup final in 2022, and the proposal would give the Pacific nations a clearer place among the sport's elite.

Australia's men have won the past three World Cups, so any shift in the top group would be felt in the bigger picture of the sport. The format of the 2030 tournament has not yet been decided, so how the teams will be grouped and how many matches each side will play remain open questions.

The host cities are still to be named. 7NEWS has reported that Utah and Hawaii have been identified as leading options to host the next tournament. No venues have been announced.

For supporters, the coming months will bring the first real detail. Ticket prices, travel plans and the lineup of cities will all depend on the decisions still to come. The Pacific nations and the wider rugby league community will be watching closely to see how the sport handles its first major tournament outside its traditional heartlands.

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