World Rugby has announced that it will award hosting rights to its next two men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups within the same process.

The international federation has today announced details of the timeline and phases that will determine the hosts of the 2025 and 2029 women’s events and the 2027 and 2031 men’s events.

For the first time, the sport will have a 10-year strategic hosting roadmap maximizing certainty for member unions, commercial partners, broadcasters and fans, providing the opportunity to develop an integrated legacy that delivers meaningful and sustainable strategic participation and fan growth.

What this essentially means is that unions and teams and sponsors, etc. won't have to wait for periodic steps in the hosting process, which in turn will probably improve World Rugby's ability to sell broad-based sponsorship and broadcast deals.

The announcement comes after it was confirmed that Japan 2019 was the most economically-impactful Rugby World Cup ever, generating £4.3 billion in economic activity and delivering record broadcast and fan-engagement outcomes, advancing Japan's status on the major event hosting map. It also underscores World Rugby’s objective that its showcase men’s and women’s properties are a low-investment, high return-on-investment proposition for nations in the modern context of cost effectiveness, meaningful legacy and sustainability.

A more compact timetable will operate than previous processes, partly influenced by COVID-19 impacts. World Rugby will be looking at how potential host nations develop collaborations and partnerships. The three-phase application process will launch in February 2021 and will wrap up with the selection of the four hosts at World Rugby’s annual meeting of Council in May 2022.

The process is as follows:

February 2021 – Dialogue Phase: An opportunity for open communication between World Rugby and unions, governments and other key stakeholders. This will allow potential hosts to understand the business and delivery model, how they will partner with World Rugby and ultimately build a compelling proposal.

May 2021 – Candidate Phase: The formal process begins. Candidates will construct their proposals, with World Rugby providing ongoing clarification and support to ensure the best-possible model. The phase culminates with candidates submitting Candidate files, hosting agreements and guarantees in January 2022.

February 2022 – Evaluation Phase: Bids will be evaluated by relevant industry experts against the key criteria agreed by World Rugby Council. The evaluation report will be provided to Council for a vote in May 2022.

To assist unions with the process, World Rugby is developing a comprehensive report on the impact of hosting the showcase events, which will provide guidance on how to maximize participation, social, sustainability, commercial, economic, trade and diplomacy opportunities as well as the significant positive exposure opportunity delivered by rugby's major events.

The extensive host selection process will comprise aligned criteria, milestones and evaluation with further details being announced in due course.

The announcement follows the World Rugby Council’s approval in October 2019 of the consideration of joint nation bids and awarding two tournaments at the same time to maximize strategic opportunities within a growing sport. It also recognizes the key outcomes from the RWC 2023 host selection review process announced in May 2018.

"The global COVID-19 pandemic, while incredibly challenging, has provided the opportunity to press the reset button and examine how we can do things differently and better," said World Rugby Chairman Sir Bill Beaumont. "This ground-breaking dual awarding process reflects our vision to further align the selection process of our men’s and women’s Rugby World Cups, providing longer-term certainty in terms of preparation and partnership with World Rugby for future hosts, maximizing legacy, sustainability and engagement outcomes."

The next Rugby World Cup will be the women's event in 2021, with the men's 15s Rugby World Cup in 2023 will be hosted by France.

The USA has hosted a 7s World Cup, in 2018, and lost a large amount of money in doing so, but has never hosted a 15s World Cup, men or women.