The Pacific Championships Explained for Australians
Pacific Championships rugby league explained: the Cup and Bowl format, the seven nations, promotion and relegation, and results since 2023.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished International19 min read
- Established
- 2019 as the Oceania Cup
- Rebranded
- Pacific Championships in 2023
- Nations involved
- Seven, across two divisions
- Divisions
- Pacific Cup and Pacific Bowl
- Women's competition added
- 2024
- Replaced
- The Anzac Test series played from 1997 to 2017
- 2024 men's Pacific Cup winner
- Australia, beating Tonga 20-14
- 2025 men's Pacific Cup winner
- New Zealand, beating Samoa 36-14
Pacific championships rugby league is the tournament that now fills the international calendar between World Cups. It is a two-division competition for seven nations, played in the end-of-season window from October into November, with the Pacific Cup as the top tier and the Pacific Bowl as the second. Australia, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the Cook Islands all take part, in both men's and women's competitions.
For Australian readers the short version is this: outside a World Cup year, the Pacific Championships is where you see the Kangaroos and the Jillaroos. It replaced the Anzac Test against New Zealand that ran from 1997 to 2017, and it exists because rugby league finally had more than two nations in the region worth putting in a serious competition.
That last point is the whole reason the tournament matters. A decade ago an Australia-New Zealand fixture was the only international worth staging in this part of the world. Now Samoa against Tonga in Brisbane draws a bigger crowd than the tournament final, and Papua New Guinea plays a home international in Port Moresby every year on the way to putting a club in the National Rugby League. This page sets out the format, the results since 2023 and where Australia sits inside it.
What the Pacific Championships actually is
It is an annual regional tournament run under International Rugby League's calendar, with two divisions split on world rankings. The top division is the Pacific Cup and the second is the Pacific Bowl. Both men's and women's competitions run in parallel, at the same venues, across the same weeks.
The competition was established in 2019 as the Oceania Cup and rebranded as the Pacific Championships from 2023, when the current Cup and Bowl branding was adopted. Women's teams competed formally within the structure from 2024.
It is not a knockout tournament and it is not a league season. It is a short round robin, two matches per team in most editions, followed by a Cup final. That compression is deliberate and unavoidable: the players are club-contracted and available for about four weeks.
The Cup and Bowl structure
Teams are placed in a division on their International Rugby League ranking. The men's Cup and the men's Bowl have generally carried three teams each, with each side playing the other two once. In the Cup, the top two after the round robin meet in a final. In the Bowl, the format has varied: some editions have staged a final, and in 2025 the top-ranked side after the pool matches was simply crowned.
There is a promotion and relegation mechanism between the divisions, which is what gives the Bowl its point. A Bowl winner is playing for movement into the top tier, not just for a trophy, and Papua New Guinea's repeated Bowl success has been the main test of that mechanism.
The women's competition follows the same shape with one difference: the lower division has carried four teams rather than three in some editions, which produces a three-match round robin instead of two.
Which nations play, and how the split has moved
| Edition | Men's Pacific Cup | Men's Pacific Bowl |
|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Australia, New Zealand, Samoa | Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands |
| 2024 | Australia, New Zealand, Tonga | Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands |
| 2025 | New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga | Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Cook Islands |
The instructive line is 2025, where Australia is missing from the top division entirely. The Kangaroos were in England for the Ashes and Samoa took their place. That is not a demotion; it is a calendar collision, and it will happen again whenever a tour or a World Cup occupies the same window.
The Bowl line-up has been more stable than the Cup, which reflects the ranking gap between the top three or four nations and the rest.
What Australia has actually won
- New Zealand66.7%
- Australia33.3%
Counts the three men's Pacific Cup titles decided since the competition was rebranded in 2023. Australia did not compete in 2025.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| New Zealand | 2 |
| Australia | 1 |
Australia's men have won one of the three men's Pacific Cups decided since the rebrand, in 2024. New Zealand have won two, in 2023 and 2025. Australia's women have been more consistent, taking the women's Pacific Cup in both 2024 and 2025.
That men's record is worth sitting with, because it does not match the Kangaroos' general standing. Australia are ranked first in the world and have won twelve World Cups, a record covered on the Rugby League World Cup page, yet they have lost a Pacific Cup final by thirty points to nil and missed another edition entirely.
The 2023 tournament
The first edition under the Pacific Championships name was played across Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea in October and November 2023.
New Zealand beat Australia 30-0 in the Pacific Cup final in Hamilton, which remains one of the heaviest defeats a Kangaroos side has taken in the modern era and was a genuine shock at the time. Papua New Guinea beat Fiji 32-12 in the Pacific Bowl final in Port Moresby.
The tournament drew 118,986 in total, an average of 14,873 per game day, and produced 101 tries across the thirteen full internationals, an average of 7.8 per match. Jamayne Isaako of New Zealand was the leading points scorer with 46. Isaako shared the try-scoring lead on four with Ronaldo Mulitalo of New Zealand and Nene McDonald of Papua New Guinea.
The 2024 tournament
The 2024 edition ran from 18 October to 10 November across six stadiums, in Brisbane, Sydney, Auckland, Christchurch, Suva and Port Moresby. Spreading the fixtures across six venues in four countries is the tournament's defining organisational feature, and it is a much harder logistical exercise than a single-host event.
Australia won the men's Pacific Cup, beating Tonga 20-14 in the final on 10 November. The men's Bowl was won by Papua New Guinea, who qualified for the promotion playoff.
The women's competition ran formally for the first time within the structure. Australia won the women's Pacific Cup ahead of New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Samoa won the four-team women's Pacific Bowl, which also served as the Asia-Pacific qualifier for the 2026 Women's Rugby League World Cup, ahead of the Cook Islands, Fiji and Tonga.
The 2025 tournament
The 2025 edition again used six stadiums across Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Australia, with the finals staged at Western Sydney Stadium.
New Zealand beat Samoa 36-14 in the men's Pacific Cup final on 9 November in front of 28,084. Papua New Guinea won the men's Pacific Bowl undefeated with two wins. Australia won the women's Pacific Cup and the Cook Islands won the women's Pacific Bowl.
The number that stood out was not the final. Samoa against Tonga in Brisbane drew 44,682, comfortably the biggest crowd of the tournament and larger than the decider. That is the clearest available evidence that Pacific rugby league in Australian cities is now a commercial proposition in its own right rather than an adjunct to Australia-New Zealand fixtures.
- Samoa v Tonga in Brisbane44682
- Men's Pacific Cup final in Sydney28084
Published attendances for two specific 2025 matches. Not tournament averages, and not comparable with domestic club attendances, which are drawn from a full season.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Samoa v Tonga in Brisbane | 44682 |
| Men's Pacific Cup final in Sydney | 28084 |
The Cup finals side by side
Two of the three finals were one-sided and one was close. That is a small sample and should not be over-read, but the pattern of the tournament so far is that Cup finals have tended to break open rather than go to the wire, which is what usually happens when sides with almost no preparation time meet in a single decisive match.
Why the tournament exists at all
Between 1997 and 2017, Australia's regular international was the Anzac Test against New Zealand, played mid-season. It was a good fixture and it served exactly two countries.
The move to the Oceania Cup in 2019 and then the Pacific Championships in 2023 was an admission that the region had changed. Samoa, Tonga and Fiji were producing and fielding sides capable of beating Test nations. Papua New Guinea, where rugby league is the national game, had no regular international programme worth the name. A tiered tournament solved both problems: competitive matches for the top nations, and a guaranteed annual programme with home fixtures for the second tier.
The cost was the mid-season window. Nothing on the current calendar occupies the April and May slot the Anzac Test used, and Australian audiences now see their national side only after the domestic season has finished and attention has moved on.
How the tournament fits the Australian calendar
The window is fixed by the club season. Almost every player involved is contracted to a National Rugby League club, and none of them is available until the grand final has been played. That gives the international programme roughly four weeks from mid-October, and everything has to fit inside it.
The practical consequences are severe. Squads assemble with days rather than weeks of preparation. Players arrive carrying a season of load, and withdrawals for surgery and rest are routine. And a World Cup, an Ashes tour and a Pacific tournament cannot all happen in the same year, which is exactly what produced Australia's absence in 2025.
The domestic calendar that constrains all of this is covered on the grand final guide and the clubs guide.
Promotion, relegation and whether it works
The divisional structure only means something if movement between the divisions is real. Papua New Guinea have won the Bowl repeatedly and qualified for a promotion playoff, which is the mechanism functioning as designed.
The difficulty is arithmetic. With three teams per division, promoting one nation means relegating another, and the sides at the bottom of the Cup are the ones whose participation the tournament most needs commercially. Every tiered competition with small divisions faces this, and the Pacific Championships has not yet had a year where a marquee nation faced genuine relegation.
The other constraint is that the seven-nation field has no entry point below it. There is no third division and no qualifying tournament feeding the Bowl, so a developing nation has nowhere to play into the structure.
World Cup qualification and the rankings
The Pacific Championships sits inside International Rugby League's published multi-year international calendar, and results feed the world rankings, which in turn determine division placement and World Cup seeding.
The women's competition has been used more directly as a qualifying pathway: the 2024 women's Pacific Bowl doubled as the Asia-Pacific qualifier for the 2026 Women's Rugby League World Cup, which Samoa won. Qualification structures are reset for each World Cup cycle rather than fixed, so a reader should check the regulations for the specific tournament rather than assuming the 2024 arrangement carries forward.
Where the matches are played
Venues have rotated across Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Brisbane and Sydney have carried the largest fixtures, Auckland and Christchurch the New Zealand matches, and Suva and Port Moresby the home fixtures for Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
Placing matches in Suva and Port Moresby is the single most important scheduling decision the tournament makes. A Test in Port Moresby is a national event in Papua New Guinea in a way no fixture in Sydney can be, and it is worth more to the sport's development than the same match played in an Australian city. Brisbane's role is different again: the Queensland capital has large Samoan and Tongan communities, which is why Suncorp Stadium has produced the tournament's biggest crowds.
Watching it in Australia
Matches have been carried on the Nine Network and Fox League in Australia, and on Sky Sport in New Zealand. International broadcast arrangements are negotiated separately from the domestic club rights, which is why the free-to-air and subscription split for the Pacific Championships does not necessarily match the club season. The domestic agreement and how it treats representative football is covered on the NRL broadcast rights page.
Kick-off times are the practical problem for Australian viewers. Matches in Auckland and Christchurch run on New Zealand time, and fixtures in Port Moresby and Suva sit in their own time zones, so a tournament weekend can spread across a wide range of local start times.
Following a tournament weekend
A typical round produces two or three internationals across two or three countries in a single weekend, with men's and women's fixtures often paired at the same venue. Double-headers are the norm rather than the exception, so a ticket to a men's fixture in Brisbane or Sydney will usually include a women's international played immediately before it. That is among the best value on the Australian rugby league calendar, and it is the main reason women's internationals in this tournament play in front of crowds their standalone fixtures would not draw.
Two further practical points. Check the listing for each match rather than assuming a standard Sunday afternoon slot, because the time zone spread means there is no consistent weekly pattern. And if you are choosing one match to attend, the large-crowd fixtures have been the Pacific derbies in Australian cities rather than the matches involving Australia. That has been true since the 2023 rebrand and shows no sign of reversing, which is a reversal of the assumption most Australian rugby league followers grew up with.
What the tournament has done for the Pacific nations
The measurable effect is participation and profile rather than results alone. Samoa, Tonga and Fiji now have an annual competitive programme against top-tier opposition, which is what a national side needs to hold players who could otherwise choose Australia or New Zealand.
That eligibility question is the mechanism underneath everything. Rugby league's rules let players with Pacific heritage choose a Pacific nation, and enough have that Samoa reached a World Cup final. The Pacific Championships gives those players somewhere to play in the years between World Cups, which makes the choice sustainable rather than a one-tournament gesture. The effect on Australia's own selection pool is set out on the Kangaroos page.
Papua New Guinea, the Bowl and the National Rugby League
Papua New Guinea's dominance of the Pacific Bowl is directly connected to the country's entry into Australian club rugby league. A team is planned to enter the National Rugby League in 2028, backed by a substantial Commonwealth funding commitment covering the club, grassroots development and community programmes across Papua New Guinea and the Pacific.
The annual Bowl fixture in Port Moresby has been the visible proof of concept: a full international, at home, with a crowd, staged successfully every year. That is a different argument from a spreadsheet, and it is the one that has carried the expansion case.
The women's competition
The women's Pacific Cup and Bowl were formalised in 2024 and have run alongside the men's competition since. Australia have won both women's Cups decided so far. Samoa won the 2024 Bowl and the Cook Islands won it in 2025.
The women's tournament has grown faster than the men's, for the same reason the domestic women's competition has: it started from a much lower base and the pathway behind it has expanded rapidly. The Australian side of that pathway is covered on the NRLW page, and the representative fixture that feeds it is on the State of Origin page.
What a Pacific Championships squad looks like
Almost every player in the tournament, across all seven nations, is contracted to a club in Australia or New Zealand. That single fact explains most of what is odd about the competition.
It means a Samoan or Tongan side is not a touring party from another country but a group of players who spent the previous eight months in the same domestic competition as the Australians they are about to face. They know each other's defensive reads. They have the same conditioning base and the same accumulated injuries. Preparation time is measured in days.
It also means squad availability is decided by clubs and by player welfare policy rather than by the national bodies. A player coming off a long finals campaign may be rested. A player carrying an injury that would have been managed through a bye is instead sent for surgery. The result is that no nation, including Australia, fields the side it would pick on merit alone.
For a viewer this changes what the results mean. A heavy score in one direction is often a statement about who had a full week of preparation and who assembled on a Thursday, rather than about the underlying quality of two playing groups. It is a reason to treat single-match results in this tournament with more caution than club results.
The second tier and why it is not a formality
The Pacific Bowl is easy to dismiss as a development division. It is not, for two reasons.
The first is Papua New Guinea, where rugby league is the national sport in a way that has no Australian parallel. A home international in Port Moresby is a national occasion, and the side has been strong enough to win the Bowl repeatedly and to qualify for promotion consideration.
The second is Fiji and the Cook Islands, both of which draw on player pools inside Australian and New Zealand club football that are considerably deeper than population figures would suggest. Fiji reached a World Cup semi-final in the recent past. The Cook Islands, a nation of a few thousand eligible residents, fields a side built almost entirely from players born in New Zealand and Australia.
The Bowl's real limitation is not the standard of the football. It is that nothing sits beneath it, so a nation outside the seven has no competitive route in. Building a third tier or a qualifying series is the obvious next structural step, and it has not happened.
How it compares with State of Origin
Australians reaching for a reference point usually reach for Origin, and the comparison is unhelpful in almost every respect.
Origin is played mid-season at maximum intensity, in front of crowds and television audiences that dwarf anything the international game produces domestically, and it is the most valuable single property in the Australian rights market. A Pacific Championships fixture is played after the season, in a shorter window, in front of a fraction of the audience.
The one respect in which the comparison holds is selection weight. Origin is the trial that sorts the Kangaroos squad, and a strong Pacific Championships is one of the few other ways a player can build a representative case. For players choosing a Pacific nation, the tournament is the only stage available in a non-World Cup year, which makes it disproportionately important to them and disproportionately invisible to the general Australian audience. The Origin system itself is set out on the State of Origin page.
The tournament's real limitations
Three are worth naming plainly. The field is seven nations with no route in from below, so the competition cannot grow without a structure being built beneath it. The window is four weeks at the end of a punishing club season, which limits preparation and guarantees withdrawals. And the biggest nation in the region can simply not turn up, as Australia did not in 2025, because the calendar cannot hold a World Cup, a tour and a regional tournament at once.
None of that makes the tournament unsuccessful. It replaced a two-team fixture with a seven-nation competition in six years, and it produced a 44,682 crowd for a match not involving Australia or New Zealand. But it is a young competition operating inside constraints it does not control.
What the tournament has changed about Australian rugby league
The most obvious change is that Australia no longer has an assumed international opponent. For fifty years the Kangaroos' regular fixture list was Great Britain and New Zealand, in that order. It is now a rotating set of Pacific nations, any of which can field a side with ten or more current National Rugby League regulars.
The second change is in how Australian clubs think about recruitment. A player's international allegiance is now a live consideration in squad planning, because a Samoan or Tongan international will be unavailable in the same window as an Australian one, and clubs plan pre-season around who is coming back late. That is a new administrative problem for a competition that used to release a handful of players to one representative side.
The third change is cultural and harder to measure. The Pacific fixtures in Brisbane and Sydney have brought crowds into rugby league grounds who were not previously buying tickets to internationals, and the pre-match ceremonies attached to Samoan, Tongan and Fijian sides have become a recognised part of the Australian sporting calendar rather than a curiosity. That has happened in about eight years, which by the standards of sporting change in Australia is fast.
The unanswered questions
Four things about the competition are genuinely unsettled and worth watching rather than assuming, and none of them will be resolved by a single edition. Regional tournaments in any sport take a decade or more to settle into a stable shape, and this one is not yet halfway through that process. What follows is a list of open questions rather than predictions, and each has been argued publicly by administrators and players on both sides.
Whether promotion and relegation will ever be applied to a marquee nation, given the commercial consequences of relegating one of the top three. Whether a third tier or a qualifying series will be built beneath the Bowl, which is the only way the field grows past seven. Whether the mid-season international window can be recovered, because the current end-of-season slot is the tournament's biggest structural handicap in Australia.
And whether the competition survives contact with a Papua New Guinea club in the National Rugby League. If Port Moresby has a professional club from 2028, the Bowl's role as Papua New Guinea's only regular high-level football changes, and the argument for the second tier will have to be made again on different grounds.
Reading the results with the right caveats
Attendance totals are not comparable across editions, because the number of match days and the mix of host countries changed each year. Division line-ups are reset annually on rankings and availability, so a table of who played where in 2024 does not describe 2026. And the Bowl format has varied between a final and a table finish, which means the phrase "Bowl winner" does not always describe the same thing.
What is stable is the shape: two tiers, seven nations, an October and November window, and an Australian side that is favoured but no longer certain.
One further caution applies to squad and team-list reporting. Because withdrawals are common in the days before an end-of-season international, a team named on a Tuesday is often not the team that plays on the Saturday, and Australian coverage of the tournament tends to be published early in the week. Check the confirmed team sheet on match day rather than the squad announcement, particularly for the Pacific nations, whose players are the most likely to be released late by clubs or ruled out after a long finals campaign.
Where to go next
Australia's full international record and its Ashes history are on the Kangaroos page, and the World Cup record is on the Rugby League World Cup page. How the code arrived in Australia in the first place is covered on the rugby league origins page, and the differences between the two rugby codes are on the league and union comparison.
For the broader picture of Australian sport, start at the Australia hub or the rugby section.