The Women's Challenge Cup is a

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as rugby league in English-speaking countries and rugby 13/XIII in non-Anglophone Europe, is a contact sport, full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular Rugby league playin ...

knockout A knockout (abbreviated to KO or K.O.) is a fight-ending, winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, mixed martial arts, karate, some forms of taekwondo and other sports involving striking, ...

competition organised by the

Rugby Football League The Rugby Football League (RFL) is the governing body for rugby league in England. Founded in 1895 as the Northern Rugby Football Union following 22 clubs resigning from the Rugby Football Union, it changed its name in 1922 to the Rugby Footb ...

. The competition started in 2012.

History

2012–2016: Foundations

The Women's Challenge Cup was set up in 2012 to run alongside the men's competition to give women's rugby teams more competitive games and to give the sport a bigger profile by attaching it to the

Challenge Cup The Rugby Football League Challenge Cup, commonly known just as the Challenge Cup is a Single-elimination tournament, knockout rugby league cup competition organised by the Rugby Football League, held annually since 1896, it is the world's old ...

. Most teams in the first few years were community clubs and had no links to professional men's clubs. In 2014 the RFL set up an amateur league for the women's game, to help more women's teams get regular game time.

2017–2020: Exposure

In 2018 the competition started to receive a much higher profile, with the final being broadcast live on the

BBC Sport BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC, providing national sports coverage for BBC BBC Television, television, BBC Radio, radio and BBC Online, online. The BBC holds the television and radio UK broadcasting rights to several sports, broadc ...

website. In 2019 bookmakers

Coral Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...

agreed to sponsor the competition – in addition to their sponsorship of the men's

– and it was also announced that the final of the 2019 Cup would be played as part of a triple-header with the semi-finals of the men's 2019 Challenge Cup at the University of Bolton Stadium on 27 July 2019. The 2019 competition also saw the introduction of a new trophy commissioned by the RFL. In 2020, the competition was suspended after the first round and later cancelled due to the

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2021–present: Restructuring

In the 2021 competition, entry was restricted to the ten teams in the Super League. The following year the competition expanded to 16 teams (12 Super League, three Championship and one Super League South) and a group stage was introduced with the top two teams from the four groups advancing to the quarter-final stage.

Finals

List of teams by number of wins

Challenge Shield

Between 2012 and 2019 teams that were knocked out of the cup in the early rounds went on to compete in the Challenge Shield competition. In 2021, with entry to the Challenge Cup restricted, the Rugby Football League launched a Women's League Cup for teams outside of the Super League and Championship. In 2022, the League Cup was opened to teams from the Championship, with the two sides that did not progress from the group stage of the Challenge Cup entering the League Cup at the quarter-final round. In 2024, the League Cup also included a League Plate competition and these were renamed as the Challenge Shield and Challenge Plate in 2025.

Sponsorship

References

{{Great Britain rugby league links 2012 establishments in England Women's rugby league competitions in England National cup competitions Recurring sporting events established in 2012