{"id":303105,"date":"2025-11-23T07:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T07:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303105\/"},"modified":"2025-11-23T07:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T07:57:09","slug":"draws-released-for-2026-mens-womens-and-wheelchair-rugby-league-world-cups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/303105\/","title":{"rendered":"Draws released for 2026 men’s, women’s and wheelchair rugby league world cups"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tonga has been given a tough draw at next year’s Rugby League World Cup, including a showdown with arch-rivals Samoa at Parramatta.<\/p>\n

The Kristian Woolf-coached Tongans have been drawn in Group C, which means they play matches against Group B sides England, Samoa and Lebanon.<\/p>\n

Their round-three showdown with Samoa on November 1 at CommBank Stadium is set to be a sellout after 44,682 fans watched the Samoans beat Tonga 34-6 at Suncorp Stadium in this year’s Pacific Cup.<\/p>\n

Samoa creates rugby league magic<\/a><\/p>\n

The passion of the Pacific shines through in Samoa’s rugby league team, and the pride the people have is evident on the island.<\/p>\n

Defending World Cup champions Australia will kick off the 10-nation men’s tournament against Pacific Cup holders and Group A rivals New Zealand on October 15 at Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n

The Kangaroos, who swept England 3-0 in the recent Ashes series, will then play the remaining Group A sides Fiji and the Cook Islands in the following weeks.<\/p>\n

Group A’s four sides play each other once in the three round-robin clashes ahead of the semi-finals, and the final at Suncorp Stadium on Sunday, November 15.<\/p>\n

The semi-finals will be held at Newcastle’s McDonald Jones Stadium and Sydney’s Allianz Stadium.<\/p>\n

Group B and C feature three teams apiece, but sides in each will play three games against those in the opposite group.<\/p>\n

Tonga, PNG and France make up Group B.<\/p>\n

\"<\/p>\n

Tonga have been handled a difficult draw in the men’s tournament.\u00a0 (Getty Images: Matt King)<\/p>\n

The top two sides from Group A go through to the semi-finals, while the six teams in Groups B and C will form a ladder of their own, with the top two playing semis.<\/p>\n

That makes Tonga’s task, which includes clashes against England in Perth on October 17 and their showdown with Samoa, tougher than any other team’s.<\/p>\n

World Cup titles for men, women and wheelchair will be contested in Australia and Papua New Guinea, with 14 nations and 26 teams playing 53 matches across 31 days.<\/p>\n

The Women’s World Cup boasts eight sides with Australia, Samoa, England and Wales in Group A. Group B consists of New Zealand, PNG, France and Fiji.<\/p>\n

Each team will play three matches against the other teams in their group. The top two teams from each group will progress to the semis.<\/p>\n

Australia and Samoa will open the tournament at CommBank Stadium on October 16.<\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\n

ABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n

The same two-group format applies in the Wheelchair World Cup, with England, Ireland, Wales and the USA in Group A and Australia, Scotland, France and New Zealand in Group B.<\/p>\n

All the wheelchair showdowns will be held at Wollongong’s WIN Entertainment Centre.<\/p>\n

Australian Rugby League (ARLC) chairman Peter V’landys said the World Cup would build on the success of both domestic and international rugby league.<\/p>\n

“Rugby League World Cup 2026 couldn’t come at a better time on the back of record-breaking NRL and NRLW seasons, a successful Ashes series, and the most exciting Pacific Championships ever,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Representing your country is the ultimate honour and doing so in a World Cup is the ultimate stage. The talent, skill, physicality, passion and raw emotion on display will be something like we have never seen before.<\/p>\n

“This will be the best and most successful Rugby League World Cup on record.”<\/p>\n

AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tonga has been given a tough draw at next year’s Rugby League World Cup, including a showdown with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,1208,3739,761,762,1736,158,159,139707,5993,85,18559],"class_list":["post-303105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-england","tag-fiji","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-new-zealand","tag-nrl","tag-rugby-league","tag-rugby-league-world-cup","tag-samoa","tag-sports","tag-tonga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=303105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/303105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=303105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=303105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=303105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}