ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025: How teams qualified

The ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 is ready to get underway, with eight teams set to battle it out in India as hosts with one venue in Sri Lanka. Action gets underway on 30 September and runs until the final on 2 November, but the journey for some began long before in order to secure their place at the tournament.

Here is how each team qualified for ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025:

Hosts, India, were automatically assured of their place, as they welcome the world for the fourth time. They hosted most recently in 2013, having also done so in 1978 and 1997, and will hope familiar surroundings can help them to a first-ever title.

They are joined by five teams who qualified by virtue of their final positions in the ICC 2022-2025 Women’s Championship. The top five ranked teams, aside from hosts India, earned direct entry thanks to their performances across three years of international fixtures between the world’s top 10 teams.

Defending champions Australia finished top of the table, losing just three of their 24 matches, while 2022 runners-up England, finished third behind India. England last lifted the trophy on home soil in 2017, while Australia are searching for an eighth title having reclaimed their title in 2022.

South Africa, Sri Lanka, and New Zealand also all earned qualification via the same method. New Zealand won their only title in 2000, when they beat Australia, and last reached the final in 2009, while South Africa have been semi-finalists at the last two editions. Sri Lanka return to the table having missed out on the 2022 edition in New Zealand.

That left two spots available, and six teams fought it out at the ICC Women’s Cricket World Cup 2025 Qualifier in Pakistan in April. The bottom four teams from the Women’s Championship, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ireland and West Indies were joined by Scotland and Thailand for a round-robin competition from which the top two nations would progress to the World Cup.

Hosts Pakistan won all five of their matches to qualify in style, while Bangladesh edged out the West Indies on net run rate to edge through in dramatic fashion. The Tigresses faced a nervous wait as the West Indies played Thailand in the final match, but the Windies were unable to reach their total quickly enough to claim the second qualifying spot.

Neither of the qualifying sides have reached the knockout stages, with Pakistan eighth in 2022 and Bangladesh seventh on their World Cup debut.