Murray Kinsella Reports from Paris

WORLD RUGBY HAS confirmed that the draw for the 2027 World Cup will take place in January 2026.

The draw for the current World Cup took place three years before the tournament and led to the unpopular situation of the top-five-ranked teams all being on the same side of the draw in France.

That meant that the top four teams in the world – South Africa, New Zealand, France, and Ireland – met in two of the recent quarter-finals, with hosts France and Ireland knocked out before the semi-finals.

For the next World Cup in Australia, World Rugby will do the draw closer to the tournament but still 20 months out from the competition getting underway, meaning there will still be scope for the rankings to change notably before the World Cup.

The 2027 World Cup will see the tournament expanded from 20 to 24 teams for the first time, with the new format involving six pools of four before a round of 16 ahead of the quarter-finals. The competition will start later on 1 October and run until 13 November in a reduced window of six weeks.

Speaking in Paris today, World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin addressed the timing of the draw for the 2027 World Cup and the frustrations around the reality of the draw for the current tournament.

“Is it a recognition this one was too early? I understand that there was frustration with the timing of the draw for this World Cup,” said Gilpin.

“I think the reality, and sometimes this is a bit lost, is that we were in the middle of a global pandemic. Nobody was playing international rugby when the draw was made for this tournament so we were using, effectively, the rankings that existed from the end of the last tournament. 

“That was really important in order to get a plan for the great tournament that we’ve now had. You give teams and fans and those investing in this tournament the opportunity move that plan forward but, of course, it leads to the challenges or frustrations that we’ve had here.

“There’s always been a recognition that we want to change that and have the draw closer to the tournament.

“When you actually drill down into that, what you quickly realise is that if you’re going to have a draw that’s based on the integrity of world rankings in World Cups there’s a relatively narrow window between the end of the November internationals and the start of the next Six Nations in the men’s rankings when everybody has played.

“The moment you go beyond that, some nations have had the opportunity to improve their rankings and some haven’t until the end of the next November internationals.

“We had taken the view for the 2027 World Cup that waiting until after the November internationals in 2026 would be too late. I think it would put ticket sales at risk and that puts financing of the tournament at risk.

“I think fans would be very frustrated at that outcome, not being able to plan with any certainty with less than a year until the World Cup.

“It would also mean a real challenge, particularly with the expansion to 24 teams, to plan for the infrastructure that’s needed for that expansion.

“So we’ve taken the decision not to go later, 10 months before the World Cup, so we went back to January 2026. It’s a compromise but hopefully a better one than we’ve had until now.”