Rugby World Cup 2027 in Australia: how the 24-team format with a round of 16 works, and the UK kick-off times for England, Scotland and Wales.
The 2027 Rugby World Cup runs from 1 October to 13 November in Australia, the third time the country has staged the tournament after co-hosting the first edition in 1987 and hosting alone in 2003. It is also the first World Cup with 24 teams. The four pools of five used since 2003 give way to six pools of four, and a round of 16 is added before the quarter-finals. For supporters in the UK, the time difference means most matches involving the home nations kick off in the early morning or before lunch.
Outright and pool markets on a World Cup open long before the first match, and UK supporters tend to compare bookmakers well ahead of the tournament. A review of the best betting sites in the UK tested more than 30 licensed bookmakers before ranking its top 25. Welcome free bets usually carry short expiry windows, so a sign-up timed for October 2027, when the matches are being played, is worth more than one made a year early.
Under the new format, the winner and runner-up of each pool go through, along with the four best third-placed teams, ranked on match points. That makes 16 teams for a knockout round played on 23 and 24 October. The tournament has 52 matches instead of 48, but it is shorter: 43 days against the 50 of the 2023 edition in France. A team reaching the final still plays seven matches, three in the pool and four in the knockout rounds.
The 12 teams that finished in the top three of their pools in 2023 qualified automatically: France, New Zealand, Italy, Ireland, South Africa, Scotland, Wales, Fiji, Australia, England, Argentina and Japan. The other 12 places went through regional qualifying. The quarter-finals are on 30 and 31 October in Sydney and Brisbane, the semi-finals on 5 and 6 November, and the final on Saturday 13 November at Stadium Australia in Sydney.
England and Wales were drawn together in Pool F with Tonga and Zimbabwe. According to the Welsh Rugby Union’s announcement of the Pool F schedule, Wales open against Zimbabwe at the Adelaide Oval on Saturday 2 October, with kick-off at 3.45am UK time. They play Tonga on Friday 8 October. The pool ends with England against Wales at Stadium Australia in Sydney on Saturday 16 October, kicking off at 9.45am UK time.
The two countries last met at a World Cup in 2015, when England were hosts and lost to Wales at Twickenham. The 2027 meeting takes place at the same ground where England won the 2003 final in extra time. The bracket gives the Pool F winner a round of 16 match against the runner-up in Pool B. The pool runner-up meets the runner-up of Pool C.
Scotland and Ireland share Pool D with Portugal and Uruguay. Scotland begin against Uruguay at Docklands Stadium in Melbourne on Sunday 3 October, with kick-off at 5.15pm local time. Their match against Portugal is at Brisbane Stadium on Sunday 17 October, at 7.15am UK time. Scotland and Ireland have also met at the 1991, 2019 and 2023 World Cups.
The Pool D winner plays one of the best third-placed teams from Pools B, E or F in the round of 16. The runner-up faces the winner of Pool E, a group containing France, Japan, the USA and Samoa. That makes second place in Pool D a much harder route than first.
Australia covers several time zones, and daylight saving starts in most of the eastern states during the first weekend of the tournament. As a result, UK kick-off times vary from match to match. Evening matches in Sydney or Melbourne land in the late morning in the UK, and afternoon matches in Brisbane or Adelaide fall around breakfast or earlier. The schedule follows the pattern of 2003, when the home nations played most of their matches on UK mornings.
The round of 16 weekend is the one to plan around. Eight knockout matches are spread across Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth on 23 and 24 October, and the Perth matches kick off closer to UK lunchtime because of the smaller time difference. For England, Scotland and Wales, the order of pool finishes decides which of those slots each side ends up in.
The 2023 tournament was criticised because the highest-ranked teams were all drawn on the same side of the knockout bracket, and the 2027 bracket repeats that. Most projections from the draw place South Africa, New Zealand, France and Ireland on one side. England, Australia and Argentina are on the other, where a route to the semi-finals looks more open.
England’s preparation over the next 12 months runs through the Nations Championship and the 2027 Six Nations. Squad selection for this November’s Tests has already prompted debate about who could make England’s November squad, and those matches give the coaches their last full windows to test combinations before Australia. Wales and Scotland face the same timetable, with a pool in which second place could decide a very different round of 16 opponent.
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