The 1992 Cricket World Cup (known as the Benson & Hedges World Cup 1992 for sponsorship reasons) was the fifth Cricket World Cup, the premier One Day International cricket tournament for men's national teams, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was held in Australia and New Zealand from 22 February to 25 March 1992, and finished with Pakistan beating England by 22 runs in the final to become the World Cup champions for the first time. The tournament is remembered for the controversial "rain rule".

Australia and New Zealand were awarded the hosting rights in January 1989, defeating a joint India-Pakistan bid after those two nations had hosted the preceding 1987 World Cup. The Australia–New Zealand bid proposed that the tournament be held in February and March 1992, at the end of the local cricket season, while the India–Pakistan bid would have seen the tournament held in late 1991. The seven full members of the ICC were given two votes each in the ballot, while the 18 associate members were given one vote each. The results of the ballot were not released, but the winning bid reportedly enjoyed strong support from the ICC associate members.

The 1992 World Cup was the first to feature coloured player clothing, white cricket balls and black sight screens, with a number of matches being played under floodlights. It was also the first Cricket World Cup to be held in the Southern Hemisphere, and the first to include South Africa, who had been allowed to re-join the International Cricket Council as a Test-playing nation after the end of apartheid in 1990. For the first time, the World Cup was not held after a four-year gap, but after a five-year gap.

The format was changed from previous tournaments, with a complete round-robin replacing the former two qualifying groups. The initial draw was released with eight competing countries and 28 round-robin matches, plus two semi-finals and a final. In late 1991, South Africa were re-admitted to the International Cricket Council after 21 years of exclusion due to apartheid, and the draw was amended to include them, adding another eight matches to the round-robin.

The rule for calculating the target score for the team batting second in rain-affected matches was also changed. The previous rule (the Average Run Rate method) simply multiplied the run rate of the team batting first by the number of overs available to the team batting second, but this rule had been deemed to give an unfair advantage to the team batting second.

In an attempt to rectify this, the target score would now be calculated by the Most Productive Overs method. In this system, if the team batting second had 44 overs available, their target score would be one greater than the 44 highest scoring overs of the team batting first.

While the reasoning behind the system seemed plausible, the timing of rain interruptions remained problematic: as the semi-final between England and South Africa demonstrated, where a difficult but eminently reachable 23 runs off 13 balls was reduced to 23 runs off 7 (the least productive over, a maiden, being deducted) and finally, a preposterous 22 off 1 ball (the next least productive over having given 1 run). It was seen that, if the interruption came during the second innings, the side batting second was at a significant disadvantage – one which was only overcome once, in fact, in England's group-stage victory over South Africa. The farcical end to the semi-final led to the creation of the Duckworth-Lewis method.

The 1992 World Cup featured the seven Test teams at that time.