The Rugby League World Cup Returns to the Only Country Where It Is the National Sport

Twenty-five men walked out of the Owen Stanley Range at Owers Corner on Friday morning, and they had not eaten in two days. They had been walking since Tuesday, day and night, with nothing but biscuits and a banner carrying the name of Nixon Putt and his Kumuls number. They had started the week with a 12-hour bus ride to Lae and a 14-hour sea crossing to Popondetta in rented aluminium tinnies. Most of them had never seen the ocean before. They did it anyway.

They had walked for Putt. The 30-year-old grew up in Mt Hagen and started with the Mt Hagen Eagles while he was still in high school. The PNG Hunters recruited him in 2017, the year he made his Kumuls Test debut. His father Noki began planning the expedition in April and died suddenly in June. After the burial, the men told Putt, “we promised your dad we are going to do it so we will,” in the account he gave NRL.com. This is his third World Cup. The men from the village of Warakum Komkui had decided they might never get to watch him play in a fourth.

On Saturday the Kumuls beat Lebanon 42-18 at the Santos National Football Stadium in Port Moresby, and Putt scored a try, topped the tackle count and ran for more than 200 metres with the ball. “That is what the World Cup means to people in Papua New Guinea,” he told NRL.com. “When they arrived I went up there and we all had a big cry. We were all in tears. I was shocked that they did it.” The try was for them, he said: “you guys did my dad proud and made his word become reality.”

Papua New Guinea is the only country in the world where rugby league is the national sport, and Prime Minister James Marape said as much this week at the launch of the PNG Chiefs’ inaugural jersey. “We hold the record as the only country in the world where rugby league is the national sport,” he said, speaking at the unveiling in Port Moresby, as reported by The National. The Chiefs join Australia’s NRL in 2028, and the jersey’s designer, Tabu Pelei Warupi, told The National she had built it as a cultural item: “When the Chiefs run out on their debut in 2028, PNG’s rivers, oceans, mountains, rainforests and rich cultural heritage will come together in one jersey to take to the rugby league field.”

The World Cup has been to Port Moresby before. Papua New Guinea co-hosted the 2017 tournament, when the Kumuls won all three of their pool games at the National Football Stadium, against Wales, Ireland and the United States, in front of 14,800 people each time. The ground has been the Kumuls’ home since 1975, when 12,000 watched their international debut against England, and 17,000 packed it for the Kangaroos in 1986. What is new in 2026 is that both of Papua New Guinea’s teams are home. The Orchids opened the tournament on Saturday with a 58-4 win over France, the first World Cup game the women’s team has ever played on home soil, and Naomi Kelly’s four tries equalled the Orchids’ international record.

Ten teams contest the men’s tournament this time, down from sixteen, and the format opens a clearer path to the semi-finals than the Kumuls have ever had. They sit in a crossover group with Tonga and France but play England, Samoa and Lebanon, and the top two from the combined table go through. Lebanon are beaten. Samoa come to Port Moresby on Saturday, and England visit Wollongong on October 30. Coach Jason Demetriou has named the target openly. “We are aiming to make our first-ever World Cup semi-final,” he told The National.

Tonga showed what the Pacific can do to the old order on the same weekend, beating England 30-12 in Perth for the first win over the English in their history, in front of 18,302 people. Samoa reached the last World Cup final. New Zealand beat Australia 30-0 in a Pacific Championship final. The 2026 field is Pacific-heavy by design and by talent, and it is what separates this homecoming from the last one: Samoa and Tonga meet at a sold-out CommBank Stadium on November 1.

Five Kumuls will play for the London Broncos next season under Demetriou, and four more for Leigh. Captain Rhyse Martin comes off a championship season with Hull KR. Emmanuel Waine stays at Bradford.

The Kumuls have won the Pacific Bowl three years running and have never reached a World Cup semi-final. When the pools were drawn, Papua New Guinea’s men and women were both ranked sixth in the world.