2025–26 United Rugby Championship

The 2025–26 United Rugby Championship will be the 25th season of the professional rugby union competition currently known as the United Rugby Championship, the highest level domestic club rugby competition in South Africa, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy. This season is also the fifth season under that name, and the fifth with the current collection of teams. It will begin on 26 September 2025 and will end in June 2026.^[1]

Leinster enter the competition as the reigning champions, and holders of the URC Irish Shield and will kick off the competition with the first match away to Stormers. Glasgow Warriors, Sharks and Cardiff will defend the Scottish-Italian, South African and Welsh Shields respectively.

The 2025–26 season once again consists of 21 rounds: 18 rounds of regular season play, followed by three rounds of play-offs. The competition runs from September 2025 to June 2026, with the regular season ending in mid May. The season also contains breaks for the 2025 end-of year internationals, the 2026 Men's Six Nations (though some matches are played during 'fallow' weekends) and the various matchdays of the 2025–26 European Rugby Champions Cup and Challenge Cup. The season does not overlap with the 2026 summer internationals. Some South African teams will play derby matches throughout the Men's Six Nations window, as this is a competition in which the South Africa national team are not involved.

There are four regional pools: The Irish Shield pool (featuring the four Irish teams), the Welsh Shield pool (featuring the four Welsh teams), the South African Shield pool (featuring the four South African teams) and the shared Italian-Scottish Shield pool (featuring the two Italian and two Scottish sides). The pools serve two functions; they guarantee a full slate of home-and-away derby matches for each team (which are often the best attended and most remunerative fixtures for the clubs involved), and they award a minor Regional Shield trophy to the top team in each pool, which thereby functions as a de facto national professional championship in three of the four pools, and a cross-border regional championship in the Scottish–Italian pool. The winner of each Shield will be determined solely from the games played amongst the teams within their regional pool, mirroring the format of the old Interprovincial Championship in Ireland.

In Scotland, the two pool games involving both Scottish sides, played back to back over the Christmas and New Year period, also decide the 1872 Cup, effectively a Scottish national professional championship. The two Italian sides have no individual trophy to play for.^[2]

Teams therefore play six matches against their regional pool rivals, in a home and away double round-robin. The remaining 12 matches are made up by a single round robin of the remaining teams, consisting of an even number of six home and six away matches against all the sides from the other pools, with home advantage alternating each year. Generally each team will play two of the teams in each of the other pools at home, and two away, with the matches away to South African teams usually held back to back as a 'mini-tour' to reduce travel. The South African teams in turn have six European matches, which again are often arranged as a series of 'mini-tours' of two or three matches to reduce air travel.^[3]

For the United Rugby Championship itself, there is one main league table. The top eight sides in that table at the end of the regular season will qualify for the play-off quarter-finals, followed by semi-finals and a grand final. The playoffs are seeded, with the top four seeds having home advantage at the quarter-final stage. In the semi-finals and final, the better ranked club in each tie has home advantage, so the number one team in the ladder will retain home advantage for as long as it progresses in the competition, including the final (unlike the Prem Rugby competition in England where the final is held in the neutral Twickenham Stadium).

The Regional Shield pools have no direct link to the play-offs and by extension the Championship itself, or European qualification, and it is technically possible to win a Regional Shield but not contest the play-offs.^[3]

Regional shield standings will be based entirely on performances against other teams within the same conference.^[2] Therefore, only six games for each team will count towards the regional shields. Leinster, Glasgow Warriors, Sharks and Cardiff enter their respective Regional shields as reigning champions.

Priority order for 2026–27 European Rugby Champions Cup qualification is as follows:

• 2025–26 United Rugby Championship champions
• the 2025–26 European Rugby Champions Cup champions (if a URC team but not already qualified as above)
• the 2025–26 EPCR Challenge Cup champions (if a URC team but not already qualified as above)
• the next highest-ranked teams during regular season play not already qualified as above, until eight overall qualifiers have been selected.

As a result of the priority order, the top five teams in the regular season standings are guaranteed qualification to the Champions Cup, with the remaining three places dependant on cup results this season.

The eight remaining teams qualify for the 2026–27 EPRC Challenge Cup.

The following are the fixtures and results for the 2025–26 United Rugby Championship regular season:^[7][8]

URC Shield fixtures in bold; Colours: Green: home team win; Yellow: draw; Red: away team win; Blue: upcoming matches

The matches for the regular season were announced on 21 May 2025, the earliest fixture reveal in the competition's history. The first match will be the visit of Leinster to South Africa to take on Stormers at Cape Town Stadium on Friday, 26 September 2025.^[7][8]

The top eight teams in the regular season standings advance to the knockout stage, a single-elimination tournament culminating in a Grand Final to crown the overall champion.

Teams are seeded based on the regular season standings, with teams ranked 1–4 receiving home field advantage in the quarter-final, with 1 playing 8, 2 playing 7 etc. The top two teams in the standings are seeded so as not to meet until the Grand Final.

Home-field advantage for the semi-finals and Grand Final will be awarded to the highest-ranked team in each tie; the top two teams are therefore guaranteed home advantage until the final for as long as they remain in the tournament, and the top ranked team in the standings will be awarded home advantage should they reach the Grand Final.

• Official website