The 2007 Rugby World Cup was the sixth Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition inaugurated in 1987. Twenty nations competed for the Webb Ellis Cup in the tournament, which was hosted by France from 7 September to 20 October. France won the hosting rights in 2003, beating a bid from England. The competition consisted of 48 matches over 44 days; 42 matches were played in ten cities throughout France, as well as four in Cardiff, Wales, and two in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The eight quarter-finalists from 2003 were granted automatic qualification, while 12 other nations gained entry through the regional qualifying competitions that began in 2004 – of them, Portugal was the only World Cup debutant. The top three nations from each pool at the end of the pool stage qualified automatically for the 2011 World Cup.

The competition opened with a match between hosts France and Argentina on 7 September at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, outside Paris. The stadium was also the venue of the final match between England and South Africa on 20 October, which South Africa won by 15 points to 6, their second World Cup title.

The Rugby World Cup is an international rugby union competition organised by the International Rugby Board and held every four years since 1987.

The winners are awarded the William Webb Ellis Cup, named after William Webb Ellis, the Rugby School pupil who – according to a popular myth – invented rugby football by picking up the ball during a game. New Zealand are the current holders, having won the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. The hosts for 2015 and 2019 will be England and Japan respectively.

Qualifying tournaments were introduced for the second tournament, where eight of the sixteen places were contested in a twenty-four-nation tournament. The inaugural World Cup in 1987, did not involve any qualifying process; instead, the 16 places were automatically filled by seven eligible International Rugby Football Board (IRFB, now, International Rugby Board) member nations, and the rest by invitation.

The current format allows for twelve of the twenty available positions to be filled by automatic qualification, as the teams who finish third or better in the group (pool) stages of the previous tournament enter its successor (where they will be seeded). The qualification system for the remaining eight places is region-based, with Europe and the Americas allocated two qualifying places each, Africa, Asia and Oceania one place each, with the last place determined by a play-off.

A World Cup is a type of sporting competition.

World Cup commonly refers to:

World Cup can also refer to: