2011 Rugby World Cup
7th Rugby World Cup
The 2011 Rugby World Cup, was the seventh Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition inaugurated in 1987. The International Rugby Board (IRB) selected New Zealand as the host country in preference to Japan and South Africa at a meeting in Dublin on 17 November 2005. The tournament was won by New Zealand, who defeated France 8–7 in the final. The defending champions, South Africa, were eliminated by Australia 11–9 in the quarter-finals. The result marked the third time that the tournament was won by the country that hosted the event (following New Zealand in 1987 and South Africa in 1995).
It was the largest sporting event ever held in New Zealand, eclipsing the 1987 Rugby World Cup, 1990 Commonwealth Games, 1992 Cricket World Cup and the 2003 America's Cup. Overseas visitors to New Zealand for the event totalled 133,000, more than the 95,000 that the organisers expected. However, there was a drop in non-event visitors, meaning the net increase in visitors over the previous year was less than 80,000.
The games ran over six weeks, commencing on 9 September 2011 with the opening ceremony showcasing New Zealand's history and diverse cultures. The final was played at Eden Park in Auckland on 23 October 2011, a date chosen because it fell on a long weekend of New Zealand's Labour Day holiday.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2011 Rugby World Cup” is 7th Rugby World Cup. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Rugby and World, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q270736. The Library of Congress control number is no2011084903. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2011, 1987, 2005 and 1995.
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This entry incorporates text from “2011 Rugby World Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.