New men’s global rugby competition starting in 2026 hailed and assailed – The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Six Nations will lose a rest week to accommodate a new global men’s competition outside of the Rugby World Cup starting in 2026.

A European conference of Six Nations sides will play the Rest of the World featuring the Rugby Championship teams and two others — tipped to be Japan and Fiji — in the July and November test windows culminating in a grand final in Europe at the end of the November window.

Called the Nations Championship for now, it will be played every two years but ring-fenced to the 12 original teams until 2032 — after the next two Rugby World Cups.

A second division of 12 tier two teams who have yet to be determined will have their own global competition start in 2026 with promotion-relegation from 2030.

No contracts have been signed, everything has been agreed to in principle, but World Rugby chairman Bill Beaumont hailed the vote in Paris to approve it all on Tuesday as “an historic moment for our sport that sets us up collectively for success.”

But South America Rugby president Sebastian Pineyrua warned before the vote, “It’s the death of rugby.”

Pineyrua was concerned that the tier two teams who all begged at the ongoing World Cup in France for more matches with the top teams to try and level the playing field, will continue to be hung out to dry.

But World Rugby said the tier one teams — the Six Nations and Rugby Championship sides — will be obligated to play more tier two teams, preferably in the tier two home stadiums.

Who is paying for what was yet to be worked out.

To help it fund the tier two competition, World Rugby said it will have a stake in the Nations Championship, which will be run by the Six Nations — England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, Wales — and SANZAAR — South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Argentina — which controls the Rugby Championship.

World Rugby also approved 24 teams for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia, the first expansion of the tournament since 1999. World Rugby said it has to sort out the qualifying structure for 2027 — and deciding where the four new teams will come from — before it can announce the global tier two competition.

The Six Nations will be reduced to five rounds in six weeks from 2026. The tournament will have one rest week instead of two. How that impacts player welfare was also to be decided. World Rugby CEO Alan Gilpin said a compromise on player workloads will have to be worked out with the Six Nations and professional leagues such as the French Top 14, English Premiership, European Cup and United Rugby Championship.

“The reality is that to make the global calendar work around the stakeholders we’ve got, if we’re adding something in late November, we’ve got to give that back to the professional leagues somewhere else,” Gilpin said.

The annual Pacific Nations Cup will be expanded again next year to include Japan, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the United States and Canada. The last time all six featured was in 2019, and before that 2015.

South America Rugby previously said it turned down an invite to join the Pacific Nations Cup because it expected the competition’s value to diminish again when Japan and Fiji are expected to leave for the new Nations Championship in 2026.

A global calendar for rugby has been seriously considered since 2007 and was agreed to in principle in 2017. But the giant hit to the revenue of most rugby unions from the COVID-19 pandemic hastened CEOs to consider compromise.

“The suggestion that this just makes the rich richer I think is misplaced because this is about creating a better landscape,” Gilpin said.

“There is more certainty for more nations as a result of today’s decisions than there has ever been. It is not perfect. Would we all like relegation and promotion and pathways in these competitions to start sooner in some cases than they are? Absolutely. But again, those compromises allow for that type of pathway, that type of relegation to take place in the foreseeable future, rather than not in the foreseeable future, which is what the status quo provides.”

Gilpin said the status quo was not an option.

“Those who were pushing not for this to happen weren’t putting forward alternatives that were credible,” he said.

South America’s Pineyrua doubted the new global competitions will help tier two teams improve.

“It will kill rugby,” he told the Daily Mail last week. “It will be impossible to compete with those teams in four or five years. They’re going to go up and the others will go down.”

Former World Rugby vice chairman Agustin Pichot also told the Daily Mail he believed the tier one teams were looking out for only themselves and not trying to grow the game.

“You have the Six Nations in one corner and the Rugby Championship in another. It’s self-preservation, survival,” Pichot said. “They have to see that bigger is better but they won’t take that risk. But they are already at risk. They are in the red (financially).”

Women’s international rugby will for the first time from 2026 have dedicated test windows, seven weeks for regional competitions like the Women’s Six Nations, and eight weeks for global matches. World Rugby said it will try to prevent future WXV competitions from clashing with the men’s World Cup.

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AP Rugby World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/rugby