World Wheelchair Rugby Championships Head to Brazil

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Last Updated: August 5, 2026

Tags: Featured Special Project, International, Sports
Image of the Australian Wheelchair Rugby team at the 2024 Paralympics in their trademark green and gold uniforms.

Australia will try to top the podium once again at this month’s tournament/Gail Leenstra via Wikimedia Commons

There are fewer  para-sports more chaotic than wheelchair rugby. Created in Winnipeg in the 1970s, the game formerly known as murderball is an athletic concoction made up of elements of basketball, hockey and stand up rugby. As the writer of this article used to say when competing, “it’s one of the few places where it’s socially acceptable to hit other Disabled people for fun.”

This month, the sport—to borrow a LeBron James quote—takes its talents to São Paulo, Brazil. There, 12 mixed gender teams will fight it out for the World Championship. Those teams, with their current world ranking in parentheses, include squads from Australia (2) , Japan (1), the United States (3) , Great Britain (4), Canada (6), France (5), New Zealand (10), Germany (9), the Netherlands (13), Colombia (11), Brazil (7), and Denmark (8). The tournament runs from August 15 to 24. Australia won the last edition, in 2022, held in Denmark. 

Historically, the race to the podium has been a three- to four-horse race at every major tournament, though parity is becoming more commonplace as the sport develops further internationally. The recent powerhouses are still there—Australia, Japan, the U.S.—but so are nations looking to reclaim their former glory (Canada), squads looking to match the long-standing excellence of their able-bodied counterparts (New Zealand) and a pair of South American teams (Colombia and Brazil) who have consistently risen in the rankings over the last three Paralympic cycles. Colombia hosted the last chance qualifying tournament where New Zealand, Colombia, and the Netherlands punched their tickets. 

Brazil is no stranger to hosting para-sports, having been home to the Paralympics in 2016. As for teams’ form coming into the tournament, the usual tune-up tournament for the competition—The Canada Cup, hosted in Vancouver—saw Japan win for the third tournament in a row in early June, Australia coming second, and France winning their first Canada Cup Medal after besting Brazil. Britain came in fifth and Canada came sixth.

The tournament comes at an interesting time for the sport. With a growing number of women competing, March 2026 saw World Wheelchair Rugby, the game’s international governing body, announce the first women’s world championship to be held in Paris, France in early December. It’s the culmination of an effort that began in 2015. That said, the funding pathway for women’s para-sport where a mixed gender path exists, has proven difficult to navigate for women’s teams in both para hockey and wheelchair rugby, with a number of athletes fundraising to be able to attend the tournament. Wheelchair-based sports are, after all, nothing if not expensive.

The world championships are to be livestreamed via YouTube. 

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