The Women’s Rugby World Cup has officially declared a sell-out with upwards of 80,000 people expected to attend Twickenham in a record audience for a women’s rugby game on 27 September.
375,000 tickets overall have been sold for the tournament already, greatly exceeding the 140,000 total attendance for the last Women’s World Cup in New Zealand with all competition records set to be smashed in an event that will bring new visibility to the women’s game.
The opening fixture between England, favourites for success on home soil, and the United States will draw in excess of 40,000 people to Sunderland’s Stadium of Light with hopes that the stadium may be full on Friday night.
Selling out the home of English rugby had long been an ambition of England’s Rugby Football Union (RFU), World Rugby and the local organising committee, and while the exact attendance will depend on certain operational details, all tickets available have now been sold.
The current record crowd for a game of women’s international 15-a-side rugby is the 58,948 for the grand slam decider between England and France at Twickenham in the 2023 Women’s Six Nations.
“The final we are very confident will be the most attended women's rugby match in history, easily surpassing the 66,000 crowd that we saw [in the rugby sevens at] Paris 2024,” Gill Whitehead, chair of Rugby World Cup 2025, said.
“The last time England hosted the Women's Rugby World Cup, the girls played at the Stoop around the corner to a crowd of 13,000. I started playing women's rugby 30 years ago and the prospect of girls running out of the tunnel, playing to the three tiers of Twickenham packed to the rafters is something perhaps I never hoped or thought I would see and it's certainly what girls' dreams are made of.”
World Rugby have moved to a new hosting model since the last Women’s World Cup, which was held in just three venues in New Zealand.
Eight cities will be used at this year’s tournament, with 90% of the population of England within a two-hour drive of one of the venues.
“We're ready to break records in attendances, viewership and engagement,” Sarah Massey, managing director of the tournament, explained. “This is going to be the biggest global celebration of women's rugby that we have ever seen.
“We're really pleased today to be able to announce that we've now sold 375,000 tickets across all those matches, surpassing all our initial ticket targets and really showing what this tournament is going to bring. That's three times the number of tickets that were sold for the last Women's Rugby World Cup. Our message to fans is, don't miss out. This is going to be unmissable. You're going to see thrilling action, electric atmospheres, and be quick, because those remaining tickets are really selling up fast."
