Positives for Gibraltar Netball’s ranking

Gibraltar netball received some welcome news this past weekend as their climbed the World rankings to 33rd, five above Malta.
Having missed the opportunity to play in the top tier of the Europe Open Challenge tournament due to their ranking, Malta having just beaten them to the ranking positions having played more matches, Gibraltar’s unbeaten run in the Open Challenge, winning their division has meant that they have now gathered enough points to be five ranking positions above Malta.
World Netball updated the WN World Rankings to include the results from the PacificAus Sport Series and the Europe Netball Open Challenge, the first two international events to take place since the annual update on the 1st March 2023.
The two events saw 16 international teams from WN Member countries take part in 44 matches.
Following the Europe Netball Open Challenge in June, many changes were then seen further down the table.
Israel re-entered the rankings at 40th, as they reached the minimum number of matches (6) required to have a ranking. This takes the number of WN World Ranked countries up to 46.
The biggest change in the table can be seen at 33rd, with the hosts of the Netball World Youth Cup 2025, Gibraltar, climbing five places to claim this position, after they finished Europe Netball Open Challenge – Division 2 – unbeaten. Elsewhere, Republic of Ireland moved up four places from 30th to 26th after they finished second in Division 1 of the same event, only losing to the eventual champions UAE who remain in 25th place.
The Europe Netball Open Challenge also saw new WN Full Members France play their first international ranking matches. France has now played five ranking matches in total, so have not yet reached the minimum (6) required to have a ranking.