List of Rugby Union World Cup hat-tricks

Since the inception of the Rugby World Cup in 1987, a total of 56 players have scored three tries or drop goals (a hat-trick) in a single match. The first player to achieve the feat was Craig Green, who scored four tries in New Zealand's 74–13 victory over Fiji during the 1987 Rugby World Cup. His team-mate John Gallagher also scored four tries in this match. Besides Green and Gallagher, fourteen players have scored more than three tries in a match; of these, Chris Latham and Josh Lewsey have scored five, while Marc Ellis scored six in New Zealand's 145–17 victory against Japan in 1995. Two of Ellis's team-mates, Eric Rush and Jeff Wilson, also scored hat-tricks in this game. Four players have scored a hat-trick of drop goals: Jannie De Beer, Jonny Wilkinson, Juan Martín Hernández and Theuns Kotzé. Of these, De Beer scored the most in one match, with five drop goals in South Africa's 44–21 victory over England in the 1999 Rugby World Cup.

Hat-tricks are more likely to occur in the pool stages, where higher ranked teams, such as New Zealand, who have scored fourteen World Cup hat-tricks, face lower ranked opposition, such as Namibia, who have conceded hat-tricks on nine occasions. There have only been six hat-tricks in the World Cup knockout stages: Chester Williams and Jonah Lomu in 1995, De Beer in 1999, Wilkinson in 2003, and Julian Savea and Adam Ashley-Cooper in 2015.

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