The allocation of teams for the 2026 World Cup was announced on 7 August 2023. The 2026 edition of the Rugby League World Cup will only feature ten men's teams, down from 16 in
2021. The eight quarter-finalists from the previous World Cup achieved automatic qualification, leaving two spots remaining for the qualification process. The qualification process for the 9th and 10th places will be a two-stage process. The first stage is to establish the representatives from each of the four
International Rugby League (IRL) confederations (Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Middle East-Africa) with those representatives advancing to a second and final round of qualification in 2025. The process announced in August 2023 would have seen qualifying tournaments in all four confederations but subsequent changes by the IRL have changed this. In October 2023 IRL confirmed that only full members of the IRL can take part in the qualifying competition. This left only (Asia-Pacific), (Americas) and (Middle East-Africa) as the only full-member nations for their respective confederations, and therefore will automatically advance to the second round of qualification. This leaves the European confederation as the only one to stage a confederation tournament to decide their second-round slot allocation. ==Qualified teams==