Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 draw seedings confirmed

The seedings and bands for Thursday’s Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 draw have been confirmed following the final round of WXV.

Six teams booked their tickets to England as WXV 2024 concluded. Champions Australia, Scotland, Italy and Wales all qualified from the second level, while WXV 3 winners Spain and runners-up Samoa claimed the remaining two places.

It means we now know the full 16-team line-up for the expanded tournament in England ahead of the official draw, which will take place on the BBC’s The One Show and be streamed live and for free globally (including in the UK) via RugbyPass TV from 19:00 (GMT+1) on Thursday.

England will enter the draw as number one seeds having successfully defended their WXV 1 title with a narrow 21-12 defeat of Canada at BC Place and taken their World Rugby Women’s Rankings rating to a record 97.56.

Canada, who sit second in the rankings, are the number two seeds, while reigning world champions New Zealand are third and France fourth.

Australia climbed to fifth in Monday’s rankings on the back of their WXV 2 triumph and will head into the draw in band two alongside WXV 1 runners-up Ireland, Scotland and Italy.

USA dropped out of the top eight due to their defeat to Ireland on Friday and will be joined in band three by Wales, Japan and South Africa.

WXV 3 winners Spain remain 13th in the rankings and will therefore be in band four alongside Samoa (15th), Fiji (17th) and Brazil (42nd).

Women’s RWC 2014 winner Maggie Alphonsi will join BBC Sport presenter Gabby Logan to conduct Thursday’s draw.

One team from each band will be drawn in each pool, meaning England cannot play Canada, New Zealand or France until at least the quarter-finals.

Next year’s tournament is scheduled to get underway in Sunderland on August 22nd, 2025, and England are guaranteed compete in the opening match.

The Women’s RWC 2025 final and bronze final will be played at Twickenham on September 27th. More than 60,000 tickets were sold for those matches during the initial window last month.

The full World Cup match schedule is due to be released on October 22nd.

WRWC 2025 Draw Bands (ranking in brackets)
Band 1: England (1), Canada (2), New Zealand (3), France (4)
Band 2: Australia (5), Ireland (6), Scotland (7), Italy (8)
Band 3: USA (9), Wales (10), Japan (11), South Africa (12)
Band 4: Spain (13), Samoa (15), Fiji (17), Brazil (42)