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Participating Countries

At each Rugby World Cup tournament, there have been at least 16 nations taking part. In total over the years 25 nations have participated at the World Cup at least once. Below is listed all the countries that have at some time participated at the Rugby World Cup.



The nations that have never missed a tournament, playing in all eight so far are: Argentina, Australia, Canada, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Scotland and Wales.

2019 Participants

Here are the 20 teams that participated at the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan. There were no debuting nations.

  1. Argentina
  2. Australia
  3. Canada
  4. England
  5. Fiji
  6. France
  7. Georgia
  8. Ireland
  9. Italy
  10. Japan
  11. Namibia
  12. New Zealand
  13. Russia
  14. Samoa
  15. Scotland
  16. South Africa
  17. Tonga
  18. United States
  19. Uruguay
  20. Wales

rugby goal postsPrevious Participants

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Rugby World Cup Extra

The next men's Rugby World Cup will be played in France in 2023. See the list of winners, and more firsts and other trivia, and also information about each country at the World Cup. There is also a Women's World Cup.

Major Events Extra

The largest sporting event in the world is the Olympic Games, but there are many other multi-sport games. In terms of single sport events, nothing beats the FIFA World Cup. To see what's coming up, check out the calendar of major sporting events.

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