World Rugby Men's Rankings preview: 4 October, 2025

World Rugby has published the ranking permutations for the final round of The Rugby Championship 2025 and matches in the Rugby Europe Men's Conference 2025-26 this weekend. 

Permutation highlights:

• South Africa could lose to Argentina in London this weekend and still remain top of the World Rugby Men’s Rankings, providing that they don’t lose to Los Pumas by more than 15 points or New Zealand beat Australia by that same margin.
• These scenarios would see a third change at the top during The Rugby Championship 2025 with New Zealand and South Africa swapping places again, dropping the world champions to third.
• A South Africa win could see their advantage over Ireland at the top increase by nearly one rating point to 2.66 points if they beat Argentina on Saturday.
• If both South Africa and New Zealand win, then the All Blacks will climb above Ireland into second place behind the Springboks.
• South Africa will be replaced at number one by Ireland if they lose by more than 15 points and the Bledisloe Cup match in Perth ends in a draw.
• Argentina, who have elected to play their home match with South Africa at Allianz Stadium in Twickenham, cannot catch England above in fifth even with an emphatic victory.
• However, defeat for Los Pumas could see them again swap places with Australia in the rankings if the Wallabies avoid defeat against New Zealand.
• This will see Australia climb to sixth and what would be a place in Band 1 for the Men’s Rugby World Cup 2027 Draw in December.
• Australia cannot slip from seventh this weekend even if beaten heavily at home.
• There are matches in the Rugby Europe Men’s Conference 2025-26 – Bulgaria v Turkey, Hungary v Serbia and Austria v Slovenia – which count towards the rankings this weekend.
• However, the Conference E encounter between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro does not as the latter are not a full member union of World Rugby.
• Bulgaria start the second weekend of this year’s competition as the highest-ranked team in 70th, although Serbia and Austria are not far behind, in 72nd and 73rd place respectively.
• A win at home to 85th-ranked Turkey will see Bulgaria leapfrog Barbados and – unless Serbia also win in Hungary – move up one place to 69th.
• Big gains are possible for Turkey, with a new high of 80th possible if they come away from Sofia with a victory by more than 15 points.
• Serbia stand to gain as many as four places if they win away to Hungary by a sufficiently big margin and other results fall their way.
• Meanwhile, Hungary, who were once knocking on the door of the world’s top 60, have an opportunity to make up some of the lost ground with a win against a team currently ranked 10 places higher than them.
• Austria are another team who, at one stage, were closer to the top half of the rankings rather than the bottom half.
• At present, they are 21 places lower than their all-time best of 52nd, but they could claw back three places if they see off Slovenia in style and the teams above them lose.
• Slovenia will leapfrog several nations if they win, how many will be determined by the scoreline and other results.