2026 Men's Rugby League World Cup qualification

The 2026 Men's Rugby League World Cup qualification will decide the teams that will join the quarter-finalists from the previous World Cup at the 2026 Rugby League World Cup. The location of the tournament is still yet to be announced.

Qualification will begin in 2024 with European qualification tournament.

Background
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 the second and final round of qualification, the World Series to be played 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.

Following the conclusion of the European confederation qualification tournament, the 2025 World Series will take place.

European qualifying
The European confederation qualification tournament is scheduled to take place in 2024, with dates and venues to be announced. On 14 March 2024, Ireland, Italy and Scotland had their membership downgraded to affiliate members due to non-compliance with the membership policy, and as a result would no longer be eligible to participate in the World Cup qualification process. The format of the tournament are still to be confirmed, but the winner of the tournament will advance to the World Series in 2025.

Though the participating teams are still yet to be confirmed, the teams which are eligible to participate in the European qualification process are:

World Series
The 2025 World Series will be the inter-confederation qualification tournament for the 2026 Rugby League World Cup. The winner and the runners-up will qualify for the World Cup.

The confirmed participating nations for the tournament are:
 * Winner of European confederation qualification tournament.
 * Winner of European confederation qualification tournament.
 * Winner of European confederation qualification tournament.
 * Winner of European confederation qualification tournament.