New Zealand’s Football Ferns have held their #33 position in the FIFA women’s world rankings.
New Zealand maintain the rating after FIFA’s revision of the tables in August 2025.
New Zealand’s highest-ever position was #16 (in five sets of rankings between December 2013 and March 2016), and their previous lowest was #33 (June 2025).
Here’s how the rankings have fared over the past five years:
Latest FIFA women’s rankings
In the three months since the last rankings were released, the OFC Women’s Nations Cup took place, without New Zealand, leading to the change in positions of a number of Oceania nations.
Oceania rankings
Here are the current rankings for Oceania nations, with the latest movements in the rankings:
#33 New Zealand
#60 (-4) Papua New Guinea
#73 (+13) Solomon Islands
#78 (-7) Fiji
#86 (+13) Samoa
#100 (+19) Vanuatu
#101 (+3) New Caledonia
#107 (-11) Tonga
#119 (-5) Tahiti
#122 (-7) Cook Islands
#153 (-1) American Samoa
World rankings
The top three sides have held their positions while the big movers were Brazil, who rose from 8th to 4th place:
#1 (+1) Spain
#2 (-1) United States
#3 (+3) Sweden
#4 (+1) England
#5 (-2) Germany
#6 (+4) France
#7 (-3) Brazil
#8 (-1) Japan
#9 (-1) Canada
#10 (-1) Korea DPR
How the rankings are calculated
Points are allocated to teams from their most recent games and are weighted using the following criteria:
Result of the match.
Home vs away, or neutral ground.
Importance of the match.
Difference in ranking between the teams.
Beating a highly-rated team, away, and in a tournament, rather than a friendly, can boost a team’s momentum up the rankings.
A win over a lowly-rated team can have little impact.
Winning or losing, of course, is the most important criterion, but goal difference and goals scored are also taken into account.
READ MORE: The methodology used to rank teams >>>>>
This story was first published on August 17, 2024.