The Rugby World Cup is expanding: in England, it is assured that Australia 2027 will increase to 24 teams

Rugby is evolving. The outburst of nations like Chile, Uruguay and Portugal at the World Cup in France has left strong feelings across key areas of World Rugby, sparking major changes to the competition in the near future.

And it’s not just on the ground that the work has been done this month. Various federations, including the national, looked for ways to level international competition in the coming years , since the current format does not make it possible to bridge the current sporting gaps. There, two options were reinforced. One was to create a parallel competition to the World Cup for emerging teams that do not qualify for the main event. The other is to expand that number to 24 teams, allowing four additional nations to compete.

According to the media “The Guardian” World Rugby has decided it is best to increase the number of teams participating in World Cups, allowing Australia 2027 will be played in a format of six groups of four countries each . According to the British newspaper, the authorities chose this option to “not erect a glass ceiling between the best teams and those with fewer financial and playing resources”.

In this way, the options are open to Tier 2 nations, given that Currently, in each World Cup qualification process, only eight places are at stake. . This since the three best placed teams in each of the France 2023 groups will have a direct ticket to Australia 2027. Thus, nations like Chile, Romania, the United States, Canada and Spain have many chances to ‘be present in the next cup. .

News that helps to have more competition, but which does not yet resolve the problem presented by Pablo Lemoine during France 2023, where he demanded that level 2 teams be able to play matches against the powers in the instances preceding the Cup of the world. “For years we have been asking to have these experiences before participating in a World Cup, because in the end it is like a show, where on one side are the clowns and on the other the owners of the circus. .It’s very unfair because the players don’t know the speed of the attack, how executive the other teams are and here we are in the middle, trying to look like something but we are something else “, he declared angrily after the 71-0 defeat against England in the third duel of the Cóndors on Gallic soil, in what was by chance the first confrontation of Chile against a first level team in its history .

A situation also highlighted by “The Guardian”, which emphasizes that teams like Georgia and Portugal will not have the chance to show their full potential in the years to come. For example, it is specified that the Nations Championship (tournament between the 12 best teams in the world which would begin in 2026) will not have promotions or relegations at least until 2030 and that the The Six Nations has no plans to change its closed tournament policy where the same nations will always play: England, Ireland, Wales, France, Scotland and Italy.

All that remains is to wait for confirmation from World Rugby of this increase and the way in which these four new places will be distributed. The most likely is that Europe will get at least one of the places, which could also be replicated among the Pacific Islands, such as Hong Kong, which has been at the forefront of rugby sevens for years. America? This is still an unknown, but logic dictates that the entity which develops world rugby will seek to issue quotas to all regions of the planet.