The chances of England hosting the 2025 World Cup

Today an exceptional Board meeting of France2025 was held to deliberate on the finalization of the economic and financial model for the Rugby League World Cup 2025, whose organization was given to France by the International Rugby League.

Despite all the work carried out by the Organizing Committee, it hasn’t been possible to fully secure the risk of a deficit.

Despite the interest shown in this unique sport for all event with 4 competitions in one (Wheelchair, Women’s, Men’s, Youth) and accessible to all thanks to our ticketing rates, and despite the desire shown by several cities across France to host World Cup matches, the Board had to decide to renounce organizing this major international competition, which the International Rugby League had entrusted to France. The conditions of financial viability initially defined by the State to support the project, set in January 2022, were not fully met, despite the search for solutions and the additional three months granted by the State to the organizing committee at the end of 2022.

This difficult decision was taken so as not to threaten the robustness of the major international sporting event models that France now wishes to promote.

When rumours started about this, Jamie Jones-Buchanan called for England to host the tournament again after a huge success last year.

He said this on Sky Sports.

However, it seems very unlikely that England will again host the tournament again given they were the last hosts for starters.

Also the costs and the time required to do it all over again would likely be too much.

Further, it just makes sense for the tournament to go somewhere new – you never see a tournament held the same place twice in a row.

Either way the RFL will be present at Wednesday’s meeting of the IRL Board to discuss next steps.