Top 14 2026/27 (M)

Two clubs entered the first French championship in 1892. Both were from Paris, so there were no earlier rounds: Racing Club de France and Stade Français went straight to the final, played on 20 March on the Bagatelle field inside the Bois de Boulogne. The referee was a twenty-nine-year-old baron who had not yet gathered anyone in Athens, Pierre de Coubertin, and Racing won it 4-3.

Coubertin was the one who commissioned the trophy, and he asked a friend to make it: Charles Brennus, an engraver by trade and co-founder of the USFSA, the federation running the whole thing. Back then the tournament was called the "championnat interclubs de football-rugby", and it took years to leave the capital, until the game took root in the south-west and stayed there.

Of the fourteen starting now, Stade Toulousain hold 25 titles and Stade Français 14. Behind them come two clubs not in this field: AS Béziers, with 11 and a 1970s run of ten finals won, and SU Agen and FC Lourdes with 8 apiece. Castres, on five — 1949, 1950, 1993, 2013 and 2018 — is the club that has gone furthest from the smallest ground.

On the afternoon of 27 June 2026 the thermometer read 35 to 36 degrees at kick-off, and the Ligue Nationale de Rugby and the Seine-Saint-Denis prefecture triggered a "plan grand chaud" no final had ever needed. All 80,000 seats at the Stade de France were sold. Toulouse beat Montpellier 28-20 for a fourth straight title and a twenty-fifth overall, and France 2 counted 3.76 million viewers, a 24.5% share.

What almost nobody remembers is how they got there. Toulouse finished top on 86 points having started the season two down, docked by the disciplinary panel over the Jaminet case. Montpellier came second on 82, Stade Français third on 79 and Pau fourth on 78.

The scare came in the qualifiers on 13 June. Pau were at home at the Hameau with 14,999 inside and went out 31-33 to Racing 92; Stade Français dispatched La Rochelle 45-5 at Jean-Bouin. Both semi-finals were played at the Vélodrome in Marseille, in front of 66,491 and 66,384. At the other end, Montauban went down on 7 points and Perpignan survived by beating Grenoble 47-24. Harry Plummer top-scored with 295 points and Jiuta Wainiqolo led the try count with 18.

The salary cap goes from 10.7 to 11 million euros this very season, and will rise another 100,000 each year until it reaches 11.3 million in 2029/30. The increase also scraps the limit of 35 professional contracts per club, and from 2027/28 the international credits — the allowance a club gets for supplying players to the France XV — become degressive, capped at 1.575 million for anyone providing fourteen or more.

The LNR's new firmness has a name attached. In the Jaminet case, the full-back paid the 450,000-euro release clause out of his own pocket to leave Perpignan in 2022 and Toulouse paid him back through a route the control commission ruled irregular. The bill: 1.3 million in mediation, a 45,000-euro disciplinary fine and four points, two of them firm. They still finished top, and champions.

Vannes return to the top flight through the door Montauban left open, and open away at Castres. Round one, on the weekend of 5 September, throws La Rochelle in with Toulouse straight away, and the rematch of the final does not wait long: Toulouse-Montpellier is set for round four, on 26 September. Behind them lurk Bordeaux-Bègles, Stade Français and a Racing 92 that already knows how to win in June.

Fourteen teams, home and away against everyone: 26 rounds and 182 matches between 5 September 2026 and 5 June 2027. The attacking bonus point is not earned by scoring four tries, as almost everywhere else in Europe, but by scoring three more than the opposition; the losing bonus comes from a defeat by five points or fewer, a margin cut down from seven in 2014/15.

Only six are still alive in June. First and second wait in the semi-finals; third through sixth meet in the qualifiers on the weekend of 12 June, at the grounds of the third and fourth. The semi-finals move to a neutral venue — Bordeaux this time, on 19 June — and the final is on Saturday 26 June at the Stade de France, where the regular-season attendance record still stands at 79,741, set on 27 January 2007.

At the bottom, fourteenth drops straight to Pro D2 and thirteenth plays off against the beaten finalist of the promotion play-off, while the Pro D2 champion goes up without further argument. In between sit two marked dates: the Boxing Day fixture in round 13, on 27 December, with the Paris derby between Racing 92 and Stade Français, and the Fan Days of round 22, on 24 April.