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The Springboks kick off their 2026 season today with a match against England (don’t miss our preview for the match in today’s edition). But this isn’t just part of a traditional Test series. It is part of a new competition called the Rugby Nations Championship.

But what is this new competition?

It is a new global structure being introduced by World Rugby to create a more regular and competitive international calendar between the world’s rugby nations.

It is designed to replace the fragmented Test match windows with a fixed-league style system where the best northern and Southern Hemisphere teams face each other every year in structured fixtures that actually lead somewhere. In World Cup years, or years when there is a tour to the Southern Hemisphere by the British and Irish Lions, the tournament will not be held. Effectively this means this tournament will be held every even-numbered year.

The Rugby Nations Championship is made up of the world’s top 12 rugby-playing countries. These are the Six Nations sides, England, France, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Italy, alongside the teams that play in the Southern Hemisphere’s Rugby Championship – South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and Argentina. These 10 teams will be joined by Fiji and Japan.

There will be two “conferences” – a European conference including the Six Nations team, and another including the other six teams.

These teams compete in a season that runs in a league format across mid-year, with teams in one conference playing all the teams in the opposite conference once (for example, South Africa will play all the Six Nations teams once). The teams will then play their opposite number in a final match – for example, the team which finishes top in the European conference will play the team that came top in the opposite conference to determine the overall winner.

The idea is to solve one of rugby’s long-standing problems, which is that top teams often only meet irregularly outside of World Cup cycles. The Nations Championship creates a predictable schedule for the top teams to play each other regularly.

There is also a second-tier competition, called the Nations Cup, which includes teams in world rugby’s second tier. This tournament is made up of Georgia, Hong Kong, Portugal, Spain, Romania, Zimbabwe, Canada, Chile, Samoa, Tonga, the United States, and Uruguay.

From 2030 there will be promotion and relegation between the two tournaments.

Proponents of the Rugby Nations Championship argue that it will allow more regular competition between the big rugby nations while detractors say that it will devalue international rugby and the World Cup, by having such a large number of international matches every season.