The 2025 NRL ladder tells the full story of a National Rugby League season that ran from March to October 2025, with 17 clubs each playing 24 matches across a 27-round regular season. This guide breaks the final standings down in plain English: how competition points and byes are earned, why the Canberra Raiders claimed the minor premiership, where the New Zealand Warriors finished, how the top-eight cut-off was settled, and which club collected the wooden spoon. Every figure below is drawn from the official end-of-season table, so you can see exactly how the competition took shape and what it meant heading into the finals.
Key Points
- Minor premiers: Canberra Raiders, 44 points (19-0-5).
- Best differential: Melbourne Storm, +212, but second on the ladder.
- New Zealand Warriors: 6th on 34 points, first finals since 2023.
- Top-eight cut-off: Sydney Roosters 8th on 32; Dolphins and Manly missed on 30.
- Wooden spoon: Newcastle Knights, 18 points and a -300 differential.
- Premiers: Brisbane Broncos, who beat Melbourne 26-22 in the grand final.
- Format: 17 teams, 24 matches each, three byes, 27-round regular season.
How the NRL Ladder Works
The ladder is simply the ranking of every club by the competition points they have earned. In the NRL, a team is awarded 2 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and 0 points for a loss. Because the competition has an odd number of clubs — 17 in 2025 — one team sits out each round on a “bye”. To keep the table fair, a bye is also worth 2 competition points, and every club receives three byes across the season.
That is why each club played 24 matches but the season stretched across 27 rounds. Add three byes (6 points) to a team’s match points and you get its final total. Canberra’s 19 wins, for example, produced 38 match points, and the three byes lifted them to 44.
Tiebreakers: why “points for and against” matters
When two clubs finish level on competition points, the NRL separates them by points differential — total points scored minus total points conceded. If that is still equal, the next tiebreakers are total points scored, then head-to-head record, then total wins. This is the same broad principle used in most standings tables, including the Super Rugby ladder, although each competition adds its own bonus-point or tiebreaker wrinkles. In 2025 the differential rule did real work: it decided fourth from fifth, ninth from tenth, and the order at the very bottom of the table.
One quirk of the format catches out newcomers. Because clubs take their three byes at different points in the year, the ladder can look misleading in mid-season: a team that has already banked its bye points may appear a place or two higher than a rival that is yet to rest. Only once every club has completed all three byes — by the end of the 27-round regular season — does the table reflect the true order. The State of Origin period in the middle of the year adds to that volatility, as clubs with several representative players can lose form while their stars are away on interstate duty.
The 2025 Final Standings at a Glance
The Canberra Raiders topped the ladder with 44 points, sealing the minor premiership — the trophy for finishing first after the regular season. Interestingly, the Melbourne Storm posted the best points differential in the competition at +212, yet finished second on 40 points, a clear reminder that competition points come first and differential only breaks ties. The Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs (38) and Brisbane Broncos (36) rounded out the top four.
Below is the complete regular-season table. Every club played 24 matches and had three byes; the record column shows wins–draws–losses, and “Diff” is points scored minus points conceded.
Final 2025 NRL Ladder
| Pos | Team | W-D-L | PF | PA | Diff | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Canberra Raiders | 19-0-5 | 654 | 506 | +148 | 44 |
| 2 | Melbourne Storm | 17-0-7 | 671 | 459 | +212 | 40 |
| 3 | Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs | 16-0-8 | 534 | 414 | +120 | 38 |
| 4 | Brisbane Broncos | 15-0-9 | 680 | 508 | +172 | 36 |
| 5 | Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks | 15-0-9 | 599 | 490 | +109 | 36 |
| 6 | New Zealand Warriors | 14-0-10 | 517 | 496 | +21 | 34 |
| 7 | Penrith Panthers | 13-1-10 | 576 | 469 | +107 | 33 |
| 8 | Sydney Roosters | 13-0-11 | 653 | 521 | +132 | 32 |
| 9 | Dolphins | 12-0-12 | 721 | 596 | +125 | 30 |
| 10 | Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles | 12-0-12 | 555 | 534 | +21 | 30 |
| 11 | Parramatta Eels | 10-0-14 | 502 | 578 | -76 | 26 |
| 12 | North Queensland Cowboys | 9-1-14 | 538 | 684 | -146 | 25 |
| 13 | Wests Tigers | 9-0-15 | 477 | 612 | -135 | 24 |
| 14 | South Sydney Rabbitohs | 9-0-15 | 427 | 608 | -181 | 24 |
| 15 | St. George Illawarra Dragons | 8-0-16 | 498 | 628 | -130 | 22 |
| 16 | Gold Coast Titans | 6-0-18 | 520 | 719 | -199 | 18 |
| 17 | Newcastle Knights | 6-0-18 | 338 | 638 | -300 | 18 |
All clubs played 24 matches with three byes. PF = points for, PA = points against, Diff = differential, Pts = competition points.
Canberra’s Minor Premiership and the Top Four
Finishing in the top four is prized because it earns a second chance in the finals: a top-four side that loses its first final still lives to play another week, whereas teams placed fifth to eighth are eliminated by a single defeat. In 2025 the Raiders, Storm, Bulldogs and Broncos filled those four places, and the margins were tight. Brisbane and the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks both finished on 36 points, but the Broncos took fourth on the strength of a +172 differential against Cronulla’s +109.
The top of the table also showed how a strong attack and a disciplined defence tend to travel together. The Storm conceded just 459 points across 24 games — the meanest defence in the league — while Canberra combined a healthy attack (654 points) with the consistency to win 19 of 24 matches. Those are the numbers that separate a genuine premiership contender from a team that merely sneaks into the eight.
The New Zealand Warriors’ 2025 Season
For Kiwi fans, the headline was a return to the finals. The New Zealand Warriors finished sixth on 34 points from a 14-10 record, their first finals appearance since 2023. Their points differential of +21 was modest, which underlines that their season was built on winning the tight games rather than racking up big margins.
Home form at Go Media Stadium (Mount Smart) in Auckland was central to that finish, and the club drew record-breaking crowds across the year. The season ended in an elimination final on 13 September 2025, when the Penrith Panthers won 24-8 in Auckland to knock the Warriors out in the first week of the finals. It was still a clear step forward from missing the eight entirely the previous year.
Attack, Defence and the Points Columns
The two columns most worth studying on any NRL ladder are “points for” (PF) and “points against” (PA), because they explain how a team earned its position. In 2025 the split at the top and bottom of the table was stark. The Melbourne Storm conceded a league-low 459 points, the foundation of their +212 differential, while the Newcastle Knights conceded 638 and scored only 338 — a gap that no amount of effort could close over a full season.
Attack alone was not enough. The Dolphins scored the most points in the competition (721) yet finished ninth, and the Broncos, Roosters and Raiders all topped 650 points while sitting in very different positions. The clubs that climbed highest paired a productive attack with a defence that leaked fewer than roughly 21 points a game, which is the balance the ladder consistently rewards. It is also why analysts treat a rising “points against” tally as an early warning sign, even when a team is still winning.
The Race for the Top Eight
The top eight qualify for the finals series, and in 2025 the cut-off fell between the Sydney Roosters in eighth (32 points) and the clubs immediately below them. The Dolphins and the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles both finished on 30 points in ninth and tenth, two points shy of the finals. In a 24-game season, that gap is the difference of a single result, which is why the final rounds are so tense for the sides sitting on the bubble.
The eight that made it were Canberra, Melbourne, Canterbury-Bankstown, Brisbane, Cronulla, the New Zealand Warriors, Penrith and Sydney. The presence of Penrith in seventh was notable given the club’s recent dominance, and it showed how quickly ladder fortunes can turn even for a benchmark side.
The Dolphins’ near miss is one of the season’s most striking numbers: they scored 721 points, more than any other club in the competition, yet still missed the eight because they also leaked 596. It is a textbook example of why the ladder rewards balance rather than raw attacking output, and why the “points against” column is watched so closely.
How Tied Teams Were Separated
Several placings in 2025 came down to the differential tiebreaker rather than competition points:
- Fourth and fifth: Brisbane (+172) finished above Cronulla (+109), both on 36 points.
- Ninth and tenth: the Dolphins (+125) edged Manly (+21), both on 30 points.
- Thirteenth and fourteenth: the Wests Tigers (-135) sat above South Sydney (-181), both on 24 points.
- Sixteenth and seventeenth: the Gold Coast Titans (-199) finished ahead of Newcastle (-300), both on 18 points.
In every case the club with the better points differential took the higher rung, exactly as the tiebreaker rules require.
The Wooden Spoon and the Bottom of the Table
At the opposite end of the ladder, the “wooden spoon” is the unofficial title handed to the team that finishes last. In 2025 it went to the Newcastle Knights, who won just six of 24 matches and finished on 18 points. Their -300 points differential was comfortably the worst in the competition, driven by scoring only 338 points all season while conceding 638.
They shared the bottom two with the Gold Coast Titans, who also managed six wins but were placed sixteenth on a better differential. The North Queensland Cowboys — the former club of rugby league great Johnathan Thurston, whose profile you can read on Wikipedia — finished twelfth after conceding 684 points, the second-most in the league. Across the lower half of the table, heavy points-against tallies were the common thread, which is why defence, discipline and completing sets are the metrics coaches point to when rebuilding.
From the Ladder to the Premiership: the 2025 Finals
The ladder sets the finals draw, but it does not crown the champion. In 2025 the minor premiers, Canberra, did not go on to lift the trophy. Instead the Brisbane Broncos, who had finished fourth, won the premiership by beating the Melbourne Storm 26-22 in the grand final on 5 October 2025. It was Brisbane’s seventh title and their first since 2006, with fullback Reece Walsh named man of the match. For a full explainer of how the decider works and who qualifies, see our guide to the NRL Grand Final.
That outcome is a useful reminder for anyone reading a ladder: finishing first guarantees the minor premiership and the easiest finals path, but the knockout format means the top seed does not always win the competition. Since the season expanded, several premiers have come from outside the top two.
What the 2025 Ladder Reveals
Read as a whole, the 2025 table rewards consistency and defence. The clubs at the top combined strong win counts with positive differentials, while those at the bottom were undone by the points they conceded. The middle of the table was genuinely tight — just four points separated sixth from tenth — which reflects the NRL’s salary cap and its aim of keeping the competition even.
A final standings table is a snapshot in time, so if you want to follow how the clubs are tracking now, the current NRL ladder is updated as each round is played. Comparing a live table against the 2025 finish is one of the simplest ways to spot which sides are improving and which are sliding.
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
Who finished top of the NRL ladder in 2025?
The Canberra Raiders finished first and won the minor premiership with 44 points, from 19 wins in 24 matches. The Melbourne Storm were second on 40 points.
Where did the New Zealand Warriors finish in 2025?
The Warriors finished sixth on 34 points with a 14-10 record, reaching the finals for the first time since 2023. They were beaten 24-8 by Penrith in an elimination final in Auckland.
Who won the wooden spoon in 2025?
The Newcastle Knights finished last on 18 points, winning six of 24 games and recording a competition-worst points differential of -300.
How are points awarded on the NRL ladder?
A win is worth 2 competition points, a draw 1 point and a loss 0. Because the competition has 17 teams, each club also receives 2 points for each of its three bye rounds.
Did the team that topped the ladder win the premiership?
No. Canberra were minor premiers, but the Brisbane Broncos, who finished fourth, won the 2025 premiership by beating Melbourne 26-22 in the grand final.
