New global rugby tournament unveiled as start date confirmed

A tournament featuring the best club sides from both the northern and southern hemispheres, to be held every four years, has received unanimous backing from all the sport’s governing bodies.

Sixteen teams will qualify – eight from the Investec Champions Cup and the remainder drawn from Super Rugby Pacific and Japan.

EPCR chairman Dominic McKay confirmed before Saturday’s Investec Champions Cup final between Northampton and Bordeaux in Cardiff that an idea mooted for “the last two or three years” will now be delivered.

McKay said: “We’ve been trying to work our way through this project to see if we can deliver it. And over the last few days we’ve had great meetings with our Board, great meetings with our General Assembly, who represent the three leagues (the TOP14, United Rugby Championship and English Premiership) and stakeholders from seven unions, and everyone is unanimous about wanting to deliver a World Club Cup – through EPCR.”

Launch date revealed

The tournament will launch in June 2028, elevating the Champions Cup knock-out rounds to the Rugby World Club Cup and “supercharging” the closing stages of the EPCR Challenge Cup, the EPCR said.

McKay added: “The Investec Champions Cup is the greatest club competition in the world, and we’re going to continue to protect that, nurture it and develop it further.

“We’ve got some ambitious plans for both the Investec Champions Cup and EPCR Challenge Cup, which we’ll unveil over the coming weeks. And, to elevate the whole of professional club rugby, we want to create this World Club Cup proposition in 2028 and 2032 with our friends from the South.

“We have these incredible competitions that we own and operate, and we want to find a way to elevate them further and bring in teams from Australia, from New Zealand, from Japan, and we’ll do that through the World Club Cup.”