Following days of speculation, it has been confirmed that the 2030 Rugby League World Cup will be held in cities across the USA and the Pacific … and it’ll look a little different to this year’s.

12 teams will take part in the men’s competition in four years’ time, and increase on the ten who competed in 2026.

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Meanwhile, the women’s competition will spike from eight to ten teams.

In addition, the men’s and women’s tournament are set to resemble a Magic Round-style format in mass changes announced by the International Rugby League on Monday.

“The World Cup under its current format runs for five weeks and RLWC30 is going to be run in five locations across the Pacific and USA,” IRL chair Troy Grant said via a statement.

“We haven’t decided where yet; we are going to market and will look at the strategic placement of which cities we go to.

“The cities will be ones that have the appropriate stadia to run matches over multiple days to get all of the pool matches played in one location.

“This will be similar to a Magic Round, so IRL Rugby League World Cup 2030 will arrive in town, the stadium will be activated and there will be a lot of opportunities to promote the teams and the game. The World Cup will then move to the next city that is identified.

“There are three weeks where every nation is involved and then we have semi-finals and finals.

“The format for what that will look like is yet to be decided and nations were asked for feedback during the IRL AGM and Congress in Sydney over the weekend.”

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The decision to take rugby league’s showpiece tournament to the United States is a ploy to take advantage of its popularity among people from the Pacific nations.

Hawaii and Utah have been specifically targeted due to their large Pasifika populations.

Outside of Tonga, Samoa, Australia or New Zealand, Hawaii has the highest population of Pasifika people while Salt Lake City is in the top 10.

Samoan star Spencer Leniu travelled to Utah after the 2023 season as part of the NRL’s Round 1 Las Vegas games and he visited schools and conducted a coaching clinic for kids who knew who he was despite living on the other side of the world where rugby league is not well-known.

Former NRL star Alex McKinnon watched a stack of cars and utes filling Waikiki’s main road in the lead-up to the Tonga v Samoa game last weekend.

“It was nuts and absolutely incredible – they literally took over the main street,” McKinnon told Code Sports.



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