{"id":455272,"date":"2026-02-03T07:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/455272\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T07:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T07:48:08","slug":"japan-to-open-2027-world-cup-in-australia-against-samoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/455272\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan to open 2027 World Cup in Australia against Samoa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TOKYO &#8211; Japan will play their first match of the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia against Pool E opponents Samoa in Newcastle on Oct. 3, the organizers announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Eddie Jones&#8217; Brave Blossoms will face heavyweights France in Brisbane six days later, before wrapping up the pool phase against the United States in Adelaide on Oct. 15.<\/p>\n<p>Next year&#8217;s tournament will feature 24 teams, up from 20, divided into six pools.<\/p>\n<p>The top two from each pool, along with the four best third-place teams, will advance to the knockout round of 16.<\/p>\n<p>The host nation&#8217;s Wallabies will face Hong Kong in the opening match of the tournament in Perth on Oct. 1, with the final to be played at the 82,000-seat Stadium Australia in Sydney on Nov. 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO &#8211; Japan will play their first match of the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia against Pool&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":455273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-455272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455272","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=455272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/455272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/455273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=455272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=455272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=455272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}