The Women's Cricket World Cup: India's first title in 2025, and the tournament that came first.

Status on 22 October 2026

• Women's Cricket World Cup: no edition in 2026. The 2025 tournament finished on 2 November 2025 with India as champions.
• ICC Women's Championship 2025-29: in progress, with no winner. It runs to 2029. Its standings were not collected in our research, so we give none.

The 2025 final

India beat South Africa by 52 runs in the final at the Dr DY Patil Sports Academy, Navi Mumbai, on 2 November 2025 (ICC media release, 2 November 2025). India made 298 for 7 from their 50 overs, and South Africa were all out for 246 in 45.3 overs.

It was India's first Women's World Cup, which made them the fourth country to win it, after Australia, England and New Zealand. Through search summaries of ICC and BCCI pages: Shafali Verma (87) was Player of the Match, Deepti Sharma took 5 for 39, and South Africa's captain Laura Wolvaardt made 101.

Whether Sri Lanka co-hosted the 2025 tournament is unconfirmed here: the ICC release we opened names India as host and does not mention Sri Lanka.

The 2022 final

In New Zealand, Australia beat England by 71 runs in the final at Hagley Oval, Christchurch, on 3 April 2022, scoring 356 to England's 285 (ICC; cricket.com.au). Alyssa Healy made 170, which cricket.com.au describes as the highest score in any World Cup final, men's or women's, and Nat Sciver made 148 not out for England (both through search summaries). An ICC headline called it Australia's seventh Women's Cricket World Cup.

Winners we could source

The editions between 2000 and 2022 are not covered in our research, so they are not in this table. We have not filled them in from memory.

1973: the first World Cup of any kind

The ICC describes the 1973 Women's World Cup in England as the first Cricket World Cup of any kind, held two years before the first men's tournament. It was led by England's captain Rachael Heyhoe Flint, backed by the businessman Sir Jack Hayward, and run under the Women's Cricket Association, with the International Women's Cricket Council overseeing the women's international game (ICC, 28 July 2023).

• Seven teams: Australia, England, an International XI, Jamaica, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, and Young England.
• Dates: the ICC's 50th-anniversary release of 20 June 2023 says the tournament began on 20 June 1973 and the final was on 28 July 1973. A second ICC release, of 28 July 2023, gives the run as 20 June to 18 July yet also places the final on 28 July. We use 28 July 1973 for the final.
• The final: England beat Australia by 92 runs at Edgbaston, and Heyhoe Flint received the trophy. Enid Bakewell was the leading run scorer (ICC, 20 June 2023).
• The opening match is disputed. Sussex Cricket says England v the International XI at Hove in June 1973 was the first match of the tournament and the first women's one-day international, won by England by 135 runs after an opening stand of 246 between Enid Bakewell and Lynne Thomas. The ICC says the opener was Jamaica v New Zealand, washed out without a ball bowled, which may make Hove the first match played to a finish.

Women's one-day internationals therefore began with this tournament, before men's ODIs had become a regular fixture outside England (Sussex Cricket). Men had played the first ODI two years earlier: the MCG timeline dates Australia v England there to 5 January 1971.

The ICC Women's Championship 2025-29

The ICC runs an ODI Women's Championship for 2025 to 2029 under its own playing conditions, in a version effective from July 2026. Those conditions define a women's ODI as one innings per side of at most 50 overs, scheduled for one day. They also seed the 11 teams by how they finished at the 2025 World Cup and its Qualifier:

The seeding is a starting order, not a standing. The winner of the previous Championship (2022-25) was not collected in our research.

Who plays women's ODIs. Under the ICC's Classification of Official Cricket (with effect from 1 July 2026), matches in the Women's Cricket World Cup and its Qualifier are ODIs. Among Associate members, the Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, Thailand and the USA hold women's ODI status, and the same document notes that Afghanistan does not have it.

Rankings: the ICC's dated snapshot

In the ICC's annual update of 11 May 2026, the women's ODI table read Australia 163 rating points, England 128 and India 126. A search summary of the same article gave India 124; the article itself, opened, says 126, and that is the figure we use.

The women's T20 tournament is on Women's T20 World Cup, and the wider history, including the first women's Test (1934 per the ICC and MCC; the MCG timeline files a women's Test there under January 1935, the third Test of that series), is on women's cricket history.